Planets in Peril [Paperback]

David C. Downing (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press (July 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 087023997X
• ISBN-13: 978-0870239977
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #403,978 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am a professor of English at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. This is on the edge of "Amish country," and I sometimes pass a horse and buggy on my way to and from campus.

I grew up in Colorado, went to college in Santa Barbara, CA, and earned my PhD from UCLA. I currently teach professional and creative writing at Elizabethtown, as well as a first-year seminar on quest narratives.

I first read the Narnia Chronicles as a college sophomore. I was so enthralled, I read all seven books in a month, then re-read them again the next month. I published my first article on C. S. Lewis that same year. I tackled Lord of the Rings in my junior year of college, and I still remember reading all night, the sun coming up just when I discovered that Gandalf had returned. What a glorious dawn that was!

Living less that an hour from Gettysburg, I have become one of many Civil War buffs in this part of the country. I published A South Divided: Portraits of Dissent in the Confederacy in 2007, a study of Southerners who supported the Union during the war.

My wife, Crystal, is a professor of English and film studies at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. She is the author of Writing Performances: The Stages of Dorothy L. Sayers (2004) and How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith (2006).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hailed for Ransom, June 3, 2005

By 

Edward Waters (Greensboro, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Planets in Peril (Paperback)

I have gone in for Lewis studies since encountering his Ransom trilogy in an undergraduate seminar in the late 1970s. Over the years, I have collected most of the author's published writings in every genre he attempted, and have read numerous books and articles on his life and work, as well as on various of his colleagues and inspirations. PLANETS IN PERIL may be the best critique I have come across, and if one could own only two secondary sources in the field I would recommend this and the biography by Green and Hooper. What makes Downing's volume so remarkable is chiefly its sheer comprehensiveness. Despite the focus of its sub-title, the book manages to draw in extraordinarily illuminating references to nearly every other work in the Lewis canon, showing through them far more of the man's Christian, mediaeval, and poetic world view than one would expect to be relevant. I had thought myself to have a good grasp of the celebrated Oxford don and Cambridge professor, yet this book increased my understanding manyfold. I also appreciated Downing's objective balance. Without shying away from what he feels are Lewis's limits or flaws, he does better than I have yet found in vindicating the man against many of the stock objections that have long been levelled at him. A recurring argument throughout is that the trilogy is best understood less in the framework of science fiction than in light of its author's expertise in and love for the literature and motifs of the mediaeval and Renaissance eras. Lewis was not so much a mythmaker as a '"re-mythologizer", one who takes old myths ... and revitalizes them'; and Downing perceives him as having done something similar with old VALUES -- ones fallen out of fashion yet which seemed to him worth recapturing.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable and enjoyable view on a great trilogy, June 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Planets in Peril (Paperback)

Tha author has read Lewis extensively, and reads the Space Trilogy in the light of Lewis the man. He sheds new light on the sources of inspiration, and comments on the criticism that has been raised against the trilogy. I have read the trilogy several times, and this study deepened my understanding of it. It is well written and highly readable. I could have wished for a deeper assessment of the "pagan" influences of the trilogy. However, the study is well worth reading for anyone who likes reading Lewis, esp. his fiction.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent! Excellent! Excellent!, November 30, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Planets in Peril (Paperback)

Highly readable for an academic work. A deep and uniquely insightful perspective on one of the last century's most complex writers. Even casual readers of C. S. Lewis will find this book captivating.