Out of the Silent Planet

The only C. S. Lewis I had read prior to Out of the Silent Planet was The Great Divorce, which was essentially a religious tract. Lewis is know for his Christian bent. So I began Out of the Silent Planet with a prejudice against it, expecting it to be preachy. It's not, not at all. It is described as being in a theological sub-genre, but I might even take issue with that. The point I got out of this book was not theological at all. The ethereal beings met by our protagonist are not necessarily angels, or gods, or divinities any more than some wise and powerful disembodied being Captain Kirk might meet in a Star Trek episode. It was an indictment of the British Imperial attitude, especially as exhibited by Weston. This attitude towards 'natives' is quite clear in earlier literary works, such as Heart of Darkness or Robinson Crusoe, for instance. There was nothing wrong with dominating, enslaving, or killing those of uncivilized cultures or lesser races.

The only things that put Out of the Silent Planet in the science fiction genre, I think, are that it takes place on Mars and they travel there by space ship. Other than that it could have been in a magical kingdom. It could have been somewhere east of Middle Earth. Then it would have been a fantasy. A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs is Science fiction because John Carter inexplicably finds himself on Mars. In both cases, the flora and fauna, the civilizations and cultures of the inhabitants, are pure fantastical fiction - completely divorced from science.

The space ship is a complete science mystery. In secret, a couple of guys build space ship, capable of interplanetary travel, apparently without a testing period and with no failures. In this regard it is very similar to The Skylark of Space by E.E. 'Doc' Smith, even to the spherical shape of the craft. Lewis makes no attempt to explain the technology. Smith has a perfectly good but completely fictional physics explanation for his craft's propulsion system, but little else.

The other two books I mentioned are pulp science fiction. Out of the Silent Planet is much less pulpy. The writing style is not like some of its contemporary pulp space operas, but is more akin to that of H. G. Wells, whom Lewis mentions in the book. I enjoyed this book more than I had expected to.