That Hideous Strength (Space Trilogy, Book 3)

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It's a hit!

Having not read the first two books of the Space Trilogy, I am not qualified to speak on the series as a whole. Nonetheless, standing aloe, this b... (show more)

Having not read the first two books of the Space Trilogy, I am not qualified to speak on the series as a whole. Nonetheless, standing aloe, this book is a chilling fictionalization of C.S. Lewis' noted anti-socialist presuppositional ethic. What makes this book particularly chilling, to me, is its main characters. Jane is a graduate student studying mystical poetry, has problems with intimacy, and struggles with authority figures. Oh, and she has a lot of vivid nightmares. Her husband, Mark, is a young sociology professor who blabs on about utopian schemes for human progress and a love of being in the "in-crowd." The two of them find redemption through a complicated and fascinating fantasy plot that revolves around good and evil extraterrestrials, two camps of human beings (one good, one evil) and a lot of bizarre happenings that can only be called "magical." The result is a thought-provoking and intelligent novel that provokes many questions about one's own loyalties between the forces of good and evil, where there is no neutrality and the stakes are larger than can be imagined. And that makes for a worthy, if troubling, novel. (show less)

 

 

by Nathan Bennett Albright

No, it's a flop!

Ok, good versus evil in a final battle. No problem, I understood that but there were whole sections of this book that just didn’t make sense to me.... (show more)

Ok, good versus evil in a final battle. No problem, I understood that but there were whole sections of this book that just didn’t make sense to me. Maybe Lewis was trying to be subtle and leave little interesting threads to leave us thinking but to be honest, I just didn’t get it. Maybe Lewis didn’t develop the ideas enough or maybe Lewis tried to place you the reader in the position of most of the good characters in the book, that of complete bewilderment. I don’t get the bit about the far side of the moon, and I don’t get why there is a talking head or a house trained bear or why our main character is now suddenly all sexy having come back from Venus! It is all crazy!

I didn’t like the middle book of the three but this I thought was better. Lewis made it gripping by making it very real world. That was until the aforementioned family bear that was almost Narniaish. And why on earth did we have a cameo from the wizard Merlin? I thought the observation of politics within an institution were very astute and am glad to see Lewis develop the idea of people selling themselves to the devil in exchange of entry to an inner circle or clique of people held in high esteem. I also thought that the character of Mark could have very easily have been the victim in screwtape letters. So much so that one could maybe see the development of that great work in this.

Would I recommend it? To certain people, perhaps so. Those people that read allot of C.S. Lewis and like to see how Lewis’s ideas cross over his different works, will get allot out of it. As standalone science fiction it falls slightly short of being good. (show less)

 

 

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  I've always been fascinated by this book since first encountering it in my teens. It's dated in many ways now but the social historical details shed light on a bygone age. The initial portrait of Jane as a frustrated, underoccupied, patronised housewife, as intelligent and articulate as her husband, makes me grateful for the era in which I live! The whole underlying debate about birth control now seems archaic and irrelevant but it's worth remembering that almost everyone, not just Christi... (show more)

  I've always been fascinated by this book since first encountering it in my teens. It's dated in many ways now but the social historical details shed light on a bygone age. The initial portrait of Jane as a frustrated, underoccupied, patronised housewife, as intelligent and articulate as her husband, makes me grateful for the era in which I live! The whole underlying debate about birth control now seems archaic and irrelevant but it's worth remembering that almost everyone, not just Christians, had doubts about its morality 70 years ago. Do we treat the subject too casually now? The portrait of the seduction of an average man into evil by playing on ordinary human weaknesses is superb. All in all, I think it's a fine but under-rated novel. Perhaps very much of its time, its similar in date to 1984 and Brave New World, which I think are equally dated but all of which still have something to say to us about the values and aspirations we have or that are inculcated into us. (show less)

   

  by Judith Lewis on Jul 04, 2009 at 11:06AM

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  So very different from the others in the series, it throws a reader for a loop. I have to re-read it, even though I'm only halfway through it at this point. It's a difficult read. More heavily allegorical than the previous ones and with different main characters, it's quite different.

   

   

  by Anonymous User on Feb 27, 2008 at 03:15PM

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