DARK TOWER AND OTHER STORIES [Paperback]

C.S. LEWIS (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & Company (1997)
• ASIN: B000KMENNS
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), known as Jack to his friends, was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably the most influential Christian writer of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. His major contributions in literary criticism, children's literature, fantasy literature, and popular theology brought him international renown and acclaim. Lewis and his good friend J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of the The Lord of the Rings, were part of the Inklings, an informal writers' club that met at a local pub to discuss story ideas. Lewis's fascination with fairy tales, myths, and ancient legends, coupled with inspiration drawn from his childhood, led him to write The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, one of the best-loved books of all time. Six further books followed to become the immensely popular The Chronicles of Narnia. The final title in the series, The Last Battle, won the Carnegie Medal, one of the highest marks of excellence in children's literature. His other distinguished and popular accomplishments include Out of the Silent Planet, The Four Loves, The Screwtape Letters, and Mere Christianity.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Lewis Fiction, April 30, 2006

By 

Steven R. McEvoy "MCWPP" (Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dark Tower and Other Stories (Paperback)

This is one of those little treasures most people do not know about, and the story behind them is almost as fascinating as Lewis's characters and his life itself. Edited and compiled by Walter Hooper, who was secretary to Lewis in his later years. The story behind this collection is that one day Walter was walking by the cottage that Lewis and his brother Warnie Shared, and saw Warnie burning some `rubbish'. Hooper asked what he was up to and Warnie replied he was clearing out some of Jack's (C.S. Lewis's) things. Hooper enquired into the contents and found out that they were unpublished manuscripts, stories ... Hooper asked for them and Warnie replied if they were not taken then and there they were going into the fire. A fire which supposedly burned for 3 days. One will always wonder what was lost to us from such a purging.

So Hooper saved this collection and some of the other writings that were published posthumously by the late great C. S. Lewis. These six stories are of a science fiction or fantasy nature. The first story The Dark Tower is of particular interest because it is a partial fourth story in Lewis's Science Fiction Trilogy Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. This one being set between the first and second book. This story makes up more than half of this collection. Yet one could ask what is a partial story with middle sections and the end missing be worth? Or be worth reading? And to be honest it would be a very good question.

I would have to state an emphatic yes it would! I would declare so for many different reasons. The first is that this is the only time we see Ransom in his office's hanging out with a group of professors discussing life the universe and everything. Does that not indeed sound like Lewis, and Tolkien and the rest of the Inklings who did just that. There has been much debate by many scholars as to the questions of if Lewis inserted himself into his fiction, as `the professor' in the Narnia books, and many believe as Professor Ransom in this series. This gathering of friends is almost a scene out of Lewis's own weekly routine. The second reason is that we meet MacPhee here in this story, which chronologically takes place between book's 1 and 2 in the series. MacPhee does not show up in the trilogy till the 3rd book. This book gives us a tantalizing taste of a story that would give the published trilogy a fuller more rounded flavor and be amusing to read and debate the end of the story and the progression of Lewis's Thought.

Even if you only pick up this book for the first story it will be worth it. But the other 5 short pieces are worth a perusal as well.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Good Collection, but not the Best, September 18, 2001

By 

Bowen Simmons (Sunnyvale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dark Tower and Other Stories (Paperback)

In science fiction, Lewis is best known for his space trilogy ("Out of the Silent Planet", "Perelandra", and "That Hideous Strength"), and in fantasy, for his seven-volume "Narnia Chronicles" series. Less known is that Lewis also wrote a few genre short stories and a pair of unfinished novels.

The stories and the unfinished novels are the subject of this collection. It is worth nothing that all of them are available in other collections of Lewis's. To aid readers, in this review I've listed the works in this collection, with notes indicating other collections they have appeared in.

Table of Contents:

"After Ten Years" (1), (2)

"Forms of Things Unknown" (1), (2), (3)

"Ministering Angels" (1), (2)

"The Dark Tower" (2), (3)

"The Man Born Blind" (2)

"The Shoddy Lands" (1), (2)

Notes:

(1) also published in "Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories"

(2) also published in "Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces"

(3) Lewis's authorship of these is disputed.

Recommendations:

In general, to anyone interested in Lewis's shorter works, my best advice is to get "Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces", which, as of the time of this writing, is available from Amazon UK but not Amazon US. That collection consists of about 130 short works by Lewis. The works in that collection are mostly Christian, but it also include all his short works on science fiction and fantasy.

If you are interested in Lewis's science fiction and fantasy, and your budget or enthusiasm does not run to "Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces", then you might well want to get this, and possibly "On Stories, and Other Essays" as well (the essays in that collection generally deal with science fiction and fantasy).

Fans really on a budget who are interested in both the essays and the stories might want to get "Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories" instead of this - that includes most of the stories in this collection and most of the essays in "On Stories, and Other Essays".

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not your everyday C.S. Lewis, January 9, 2002

By 

Shelley Gammon "Geek" (Kaufman, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dark Tower and Other Stories (Paperback)

I became a fan of C.S. Lewis in the 3rd grade when our home room teacher read the Chronicles of Narnia to our class. I recently re-read the books as an adult and enjoy them just as much as I did then. I really like Lewis's style of writing and I've read other works by him such as "The Screwtape Letters" and "The Great Divorce."

If you're looking for more stories by Lewis, be them in any form, this is a very interesting volume to have in your library, but it may leave you feeling a bit empty if you're longing for more soul-penetrating stories that teach you about yourself.

"The Dark Tower" is incomplete, but a vivid and highly interesting tale of the use of an imaginary device - a Chronoscope - that lets you view an other time the way you would view a star with a telescope. Lewis himself is in the story as one of a group of friends/scholars who meet to watch the happenings of the Dark Tower in the "Othertime."

The story is intense and riveting and I couldn't put it down, but there are pages missing in the middle of the manuscript supposedly discovered after Lewis's death as a newly discovered, previously unpublished work. The end of the short story is also absent... and there is no indication of how close to the end the reader is to the ending when the story is cut off literally in mid sentence. The positive thing is that the story is so well written, it will keep your mind reeling as to the outcome and fate of the characters involved. I've heard that the claims that this is an actual true work of C.S. Lewis is now being disputed, but if it is not of his hand, it sure reads like his style.

"The Man Born Blind" is an interesting account of a man born blind who gets his sight as an older adult and struggles with visual concepts such as "what is light." It's a very short story and if any of the stories in this volume are to be disputed, this one would be my pick... it doesn't read like Lewis and I think Lewis was far more observant of human nature and of his environment in general to have made some of the assumptions he did in this very short story.

"The Shoddy Lands" is pure Lewis... almost like "The Great Divorce," but in miniature. Very interesting explaination at the end that wasn't exactly what I was reading into it at first... a very good story.

"Ministering Angels" is not at all what you think it's about... but nonetheless an interesting futuristic tale of life on a human-colonized Mars. Also a very short story, but it's amazing how Lewis can depict a character so richly and vividly in just a few lines.