That Hideous Strength (Space Trilogy, Book 3) [Paperback]

C.S. Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 6, 2003

The final book in C. S. Lewis's acclaimed Space Trilogy, which includes Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, That Hideous Strength concludes the adventures of the matchless Dr. Ransom. The dark forces that were repulsed in Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra are massed for an assault on the planet Earth itself. Word is on the wind that the mighty wizard Merlin has come back to the land of the living after many centuries, holding the key to ultimate power for that force which can find him and bend him to its will. A sinister technocratic organization is gaining power throughout Europe with a plan to "recondition" society, and it is up to Ransom and his friends to squelch this threat by applying age-old wisdom to a new universe dominated by science. The two groups struggle to a climactic resolution that brings the Space Trilogy to a magnificent, crashing close.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The New Yorker In his usual polished prose, the author creates an elaborate satiric picture of a war between morality and devilry.

The New Yorker If wit and wisdom, style and scholarship are requisites to passage through the pearly gates, Mr. Lewis will be among the angels.

Los Angeles Times Lewis, perhaps more than any other twentieth-century writer, forced those who listened to him and read his works to come to terms with their own philosophical presuppositions.

From the Publisher

11 1.5-hour cassettes --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; SECOND PRINTING edition (May 6, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743234928
• ISBN-13: 978-0743234924
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (178 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #18 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Literature & Fiction > Science Fiction & Fantasy

More About the Author

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers 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 Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

(What's this?)

#92 Overall (See top 100 authors)

#2 in Books > Religion & Spirituality

#14 in Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality

#18 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

#55 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction

#89 in Books

#2 in Books > Religion & Spirituality

#14 in Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality

#18 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

#55 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction

#89 in Books

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 75 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Powers, principalities, and gnostics June 15, 2006

By Paul Emmons

Format:Paperback

Having enjoyed this novel again and again for a generation, I believe that it is prophetic and even more relevant today than when it was written. Now that recent filmings of Lord of the Ring and the first Narnia book have delighted critics and the public alike, is it too much to hope for a high-quality cinematic version someday of _That Hideous Strength_? Lewis would be most pleased, I daresay, if any such adaptation were set in our own time, because we need its messsage now.

By the time Mark Studdock arrives at Belbury, he is a confirmed brown-nose with considerable experience in pursuing his life's ambition: joining the esoteric Inner Circle of whatever. It is striking, then, how much difficulty he has in the NICE even determining who is in this group. Feverstone, Filostrato, Hardcastle, and Straik, for instance, all confide to him that their own respective purviews are of the institute's essence, while various other departments are peripheral or merely for public consumption. By the end of the book, the chaos proclaims that none of these figures, nor anyone else, is effectively in charge.

In this respect, Lewis brilliantly anticipated insights that the late William Stringfellow would articulate in the 1960s and 70s: that institutions are among the contemporary world's most characteristic manifestations of the demonic "powers and principalities" mentioned in the Bible. They inevitably take on lives of their own and go off the rails. Eventually they justify any and all means towards the end of their own survival and hegemony. They enslave and "deplete the personhood of" every human being involved with them-- even (and perhaps especially) those who imagine that they are in control....

Of course, the church as an institution being hardly exempt from these problems, clergy would react to Stringfellow's analysis with hostility proportionate to their power. Ironically, the works of this theologian long lay in unread obscurity in seminary: while students in, of all places, law school continued to turn to them when they wanted to learn how corporate structures really operate. As we 21st-century Americans find ourselves steeped in the waking nightmare of an unfolding vindication of Stringfellow's prophetic thought, it is heartening at least to see a growing interest in it-- books lately republished and his ideas taken up and further developed e.g. by Walter Wink. For an illustrative novel, however, _That Hideous Strength_, written by C.S. Lewis some 25 years earlier, may yet be unsurpasssed.

Some commentators have incomprehensibly indicated that the NICE people were materialists. Pas du tout. They are probably ex-materialists, but by the time we meet them are devotees of the occult. The reader grasps the inevitability of this progression. As Muggeridge (and perhaps Chesterton earlier) observed, those who cease to believe in God don't believe in nothing. Rather, before long they'll believe in anything. Lewis must have been aware of the occult dabbling practiced by high-level Nazi figures. While there are always atheistic individuals, it is unlikely, despite their best efforts, that their grandchildren will inherit a trait that requires so much mental assiduity to maintain. There have been no viable large atheistic societies. The Belburians, however, present themselves as materialists and are not prepared, and would probably never be prepared, to publicize their real allegiance: it is esoteric, elite, and exclusive by its very nature, not to be shared by the likes of you and me.

Sitting in the garden, one of them exclaims, "Bloody racket those birds make!" Such a sentiment is revealing and chacteristic of one who, as the novel describes in detail, far from being a materialist, has cultivated a disgust for all things physical and who dreams of transcending it. Add this trait to a quest for esoteric knowledge and we have the two most classic marks of the gnostic.

I have no doubt that Lewis intended the book partly as a warning against this mode of thought, which Christian orthodoxy has found profoundly and decisively incompatible. He illustrates what kind of people are tempted to take it up, why they do so, and to what bad ends it will lead. Since Lewis's death, it has become fashionable among post-modernists and certain feminists to express their pique and scorn for Christianity by affecting a sympathetic reconsideration of gnosticism, suggesting that its eclipse was only an historical accident or the effect of a political power play. We could do with this book as an antidote. Read more ›

73 of 87 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Eldils and Merlin and bears oh my! November 18, 2000

By Michael Battaglia

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Silly heading, but nobody reads them anyway. I think. The third and last book in the trilogy (you did read the others, right?) and about as far from science fiction as you can possibly get . . . there's a definite shift, Lewis seems to be bringing in more fantasy and religious allegorical elements as the series continued, with the end result here. The tale is subtitled "A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups" and that's what it boils down to. If you're like me, you'll have read this right after reading the other two books (which were great, by the way) and you'll be immediately confused. Instead of focusing on the nifty Dr Ransom, you get a young couple Mark and Jane. Jane's having weird dreams that keep coming true and Mark isn't really paying attention because he's trying to get into the political "circles" as the local university where he works. However, little does he know that evil is lurking there and the folks are plotting some very dark things. Herein comes the good guys and after being introduced to lots o' supporting characters, some of which are interesting, some less so, you finally meet the man himself: Ransom. The problem I have, and this has been said elsewhere, is that he's apparently the "Pendragon" (but also the Fisher King . . . weren't they two different people?) but there's absolutely no explanation as to how that happened. Lewis probably figured it wasn't important and not relevant to the story itself, heck, Ransom's discussion of how he inherited the mantle of the Pendragon is basically tossed off in one sentence. The first half of the book mostly focuses on the college and the dread blokes there, but when Ransom and company shows up finally, things get very trippy indeed.... Perelandra was a strange novel because of setting but I could deal with that, Lewis piles so much allegory on the plot that it gets almost ridiculous. And then Merlin shows up. That's right. Merlin. He's kinda fun actually but much like Ransom becomes, he's little more than a voice, you don't get any indication of his motivations. All that said though, this is a nifty way to end the series, the climax left me a little flat, especially after the buildup in the first two books (Merlin makes some stuff happen and the gods blow some stuff up) but Lewis' mastery of the English language saves this completely, this guy was passionate about this novel and you can tell, it crackles from every page and you can really feel it toward the end in almost every word. There's a nice "Britishness" about the book as well, a sense of the sheer age of Britain and its history. The ending is kind and gentle and you're left with a good feeling when you finish the book. If you don't like Lewis for his "preachiness" then stay far away if you don't like thinking, because he's using this more to illustrate a point more than anything else, but it's fine writing and a fine cap to an interesting series. And for those of you who started reading this series because it was science fictional, don't stop now, y'all could stand to read something different every once in a while. It won't hurt. Really. Read more ›

77 of 93 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Pugnacious ending to a fine trilogy July 15, 2004

By Florentius VINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback

C. S. Lewis wraps up his "Space Trilogy" right back on planet Earth where it is up to a cadre of ordinary folks, mythical beings, and brute beasts to thwart the forces of supreme wickedness. With the assistance of the Director--a man familiar to readers of the previous two books in the trilogy--this strange collection of characters is pitted against a vaguely-familiar, propaganda-driven totalitarian regime ironically called by the acronym NICE.

This book is Lewis at his satirical best--an uppercut landed to the jaw of secular, anti-family, "post-christian" society.

What is particularly striking about this book is who Lewis fingers as the advance-guard for the evil that sadly dominates on Earth, ever trying to extend its power: a bunch of place-seeking, ethics-free, jive-talking academics who have long left any pretense to reason and science behind. Instead, they are driven by a misguided altruism that manifests itself, ultimately, as complete misanthropy.

In this regard, Lewis must be regarded as prescient. Anyone who has spent any time in American academia will immediately sympathize with the plight of the characters in the book who *dare* to stand up to the censorial, elitist, marxist/leninist, anti-religion, pro-death agenda so prevalent among the "progressive" leadership of the university. Lewis had these people's number fifty years ago.

In short, this book is a fun read and though couched in humorous terms, is deadly serious at its core.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable and idiosyncratic satirical fantasy September 8, 2003

By snalen

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Lewis's writing these days is widely regarded as of exclusive interest to the God Squad and that is a pity. Certainly this is a work of pretty straightforward religious propaganda, a supernatural thriller written by someone who takes the supernatural stuff with the utmost seriousness but, hey, so is "The Exorcist" and that needn't disqualify it from entertaining the unconverted.

This novel is the last and the only earthbound instalment of Lewis's Space trilogy. It's a theological; thriller in which the forces of darkness are seeking to destroy humanity through the agency of the sinister National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments or NICE.

The plot had two distinct threads. One involves Mark Studdock, a young don at the rather All-Souls-like Bracton College in the fictitious English town of Edgestow (which Lewis in a preface insists is not based on Durham). Mark is a weak man with a desperate desire for recognition and inclusion and is all to easily sucked into the unpleasant world of NICE. He fondly imagines they are headhunting him in recognition of his many talents but in fact they are mainly interested in him as a way to get at his wife, Jane, whose visionary dreams they perceive, rightly, as a threat. And Jane is the subject of the second plot line. While Mark is being sucked in to the world of the baddies at their headquarters at Belbury, a former blood transfusion centre, Jane is falling in with the goodies, a disparate band of desperately nice people at the manor at St Anne's, under the leadership of the charismatic Director, the Ransom of "Out of the Silent Planet" and "Perelandra".

The St Anne's parts of the story are the less impressive.... Ransom has been turned by his experiences on Mars and Venus into an outrageously charismatic, ageless and near-superhuman religious leader who is really a lot less interesting than the very human Ransom of the earlier stories and who spends most of his time delivering rather dull and condescending anti-feminist lectures to Jane. (We are constantly told she would ordinarily have found such lectures insufferable but he is just so charismatic, you see...) Recently fashionable stuff about the wisdom of being a "surrendered wife" really just recapitulates Ransom's line here though Lewis surely writes far better than more recent advocates of such doubtful ideas and perhaps succeeds making them as attractive and compelling as it is humanly possible to make them.

The Belbury-Mark story is a lot more fun and comprises a splendid and acute essay in political satire. The picture it paints of a grimly rotten beaurocratic institution guided by what pass for "progressive" social ideals is one of the nicest things Lewis ever wrote. (Lewis's intellectual agenda here echoes in a fictional context thoughts he develops in "The Abolition of Man", one of his most interesting non-fiction essays.) Particularly well done is Belbury's "Deputy Director" Wither, whose talks a wonderful and hilarious form of verbal anti-matter that is all too recognisable as only a slight exaggeration of the worst sort of British public sector Managementspeak. The news management techniques espoused by the NICE are again satirically telling and in a strikingly contemporary way: New Labour, one fears, would have loved the NICE with their fascination with spin and "modernization".

Perhaps the best and most insightful thing about the book is the characterization of Mark Studdock, an extremely telling, frighteningly plausible portrait of a man drawn into collaboration with evil not by wickedness but by weakness, a desperation to belong, to feel himself accepted in the world of those who wield the power and pull the strings. It's enormously unlikely that Hitler's Germany or Mao's China contained enough simply wicked people to sustain such poisonous regimes. But it is also enormously likely that they contained many many people who were foolish and weak in just the ways Mark Studdock was, people whose collaboporation makes them appropriate objects more for pity than for hatred.

The climax is inevitably rather over the top, involving as it does the resurrection of the Arthurian druid Merlin whose ancient powers are crucial to determining the outcome of the conflict. Obviously things get a bit bonkers at this point but Lewis is rare among thriller writers for his scholarship and has the erudition in matters Arthurian to carry it off as well as anyone ever could. A real curiosity then, strange and sometimes a bit nuts but also very well-written, satirically telling, often psychologically and politically insightful and very readable. Read more ›