Out of the Silent Planet (Voyager Classics)

A good book that explores the adventures of a man who finds himself on a trip to another planet, and discovers the wonders of Space and life—beyond Earth and humanity.

This is a work of fiction that doesn’t quite fit into what many consider Science Fiction to be today. I was intrigued by this, and after the first few pages, even more so. There’s no real explanations of how much of the science works, there’s no fancy gadgets or takes on what the future would look like for mankind. That’s perfectly fine! And there is a bunch of science in here, it just gets outshined by other elements when compared to other works in the genre.

The story has a rather simple protagonist, who finds himself taken by, basically, a mad scientist and his partner in some sort of spaceship, and they all end up flying through space to an unknown planet, full of life and strange creatures.

The beginning is rather strange, but it hooked me nonetheless, I was never quite sure of what was next. There really wasn’t a clear route to take other than to try and survive once they land on the planet’s surface.

C. S. Lewis, more commonly known for his work in The Chronicles of Narnia, writes about the intricacies and differences of this planet’s biomes and creatures, and the way they all interact with each other.

From this, we get to know some of the way of life and the worldview of the planet’s inhabitants, as well as the differences with Humanity’s behaviour. The clash between science and logic, with a more spiritual and inter-connected one, where there’s no being worth more than the other, no need to fight, or to be afraid of each other.

It was a glad surprise that only took me longer to read because of the amount of work that I’ve had lately. I really need to get back into reading before bed, but for that I may have to start collecting physical book or get an e-ink reader because my phone is too distracting at home.

Anyway, this book was great, and quite an interesting continuation after the ideas Childhood’s End showed about alien life and humanity itself.

In an atheistic world, or at least in what passes for a scientific one, space is just real estate that no one wants except, maybe, to pass through on the way to somewhere else, but C. S. Lewis doesn't live in that world (though passes through it) thus it is not surprising that his sci-fi looks more like theology than like engineering. Still, he remains a logical kind of guy and wants to explain things in a way that a rational hnau (or, say, man) would understand. I've barely begun Paradise Lost (it's on my "currently reading" shelf, which means I hope to get back to it someday) but know enough to realize that Earth, the Silent Planet, remains mute because it is in quarantine for its therein described fallen state and that the other non-fallen planets are eager to understand what is going on there (I think they are concerned for us.) Earth and its inhabitants are not so much evil, which is to say unredeemable, as bent, which means they can than presumably be unbent (perhaps by pfifltriggi) and join the non-silent plants someday.

Maybe you're better off not knowing all this going in (I didn't) or maybe it doesn't much matter but he unfolds it nicely and I didn't feel preached to enough of the time to give it 4 stars (but a little bit so it must fall short of 5.)

Having just before this read Jane Austen's Emma, I'll add that being preached to, which I complain about in the previous paragraph, at an earlier time in Earth's history, lacked the negative connotations I am attributing to it, but perhaps all that should go in a review of Emma (which I haven't written yet.)

I should mention, in the interests of putting my point of view in context, that the is the first C.S. Lewis book I've actually completed, having abandoned a few others (most recently, The Screwtape Letters) for reasons I no longer remember. In addition, I confess to some sympathy for the Abrahamic religions though think they all went astray at points.