Books and Beverages

Books and Beverages | Because Stories Matters |

  • Home
  • About
  • Books (Author)
  • Books (Title)
  • Advertise
  • Change the World

Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis | Inklings Series Discussion

January 17, 2019 by Jamie 20 Comments

(The Inklings Series is a monthly series featuring the works of my two favorites, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, or books about them. But I don’t want it to be just me chatting about these books, so that’s where y’all come in! I’ll announce the book at least four weeks in advance of when the discussion post will go live, so you have plenty of time to get the book and read it. Then, the following month, I’ll post a discussion post and let the fun begin!!)

Inklings_Sketch(b)

“A violet yellow sunset was pouring through a rift in the clouds to westward, but straight ahead over the hills the sky was the colour of dark slate.”

How have I not read this until now? I feel like a fake fan! It was a fabulous read to kick off the series and I look forward to reading the other two in the series, but first to discuss!

The first book in C. S. Lewis’s acclaimed Space Trilogy, which continues with Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, Out of the Silent Planet begins the adventures of the remarkable Dr. Ransom. Here, that estimable man is abducted by a megalomaniacal physicist and his accomplice and taken via spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra. The two men are in need of a human sacrifice, and Dr. Ransom would seem to fit the bill. Once on the planet, however, Ransom eludes his captors, risking his life and his chances of returning to Earth, becoming a stranger in a land that is enchanting in its difference from Earth and instructive in its similarity. First published in 1943, Out of the Silent Planet remains a mysterious and suspenseful tour de force.

out-of-the-silent-planet-cslewis

Here’s a fun fact to kick things off (in case you didn’t catch last month’s read): Tolkien and Lewis once flipped a coin deciding who would write a time travel story and who would write an outer space novel. Thanks to that coin toss, Lewis wrote Out of the Silent Planet and Tolkien wrote The Notion Club Papers (a time travel set in the future of the 1980s :).

I wish I had a better way to say this, but the way C.S. Lewis paints a story is rad. I constantly found myself pausing during the book and just thinking how talented and gifted he was as a writer (and by my description of “rad,” you can see we’re on slightly different playing fields).

Like this:

“Pulsing with brightness as with some unbearable pain or pleasure, clustered in pathless and countless multitudes, dreamlike in clarity, blazing in perfect blackness, the stars seized all his attention, troubled him, excited him, and drew him up to a sitting position…

…now that the very name “Space” seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam.”

I mean….

Now onto the actual storyline :). Not only did we once again see the creative and imaginative genius of Lewis, but I found myself wishing all the creatures on the planet were real and that one day I could hang out with them (add that list to Narnia and Middle Earth). I loved what got Ransom to speak with Hyoi was he heard him speaking and his love of language took over, especially since both Tolkien and Lewis loved languages.

I laughed quite a bit too, like with this line: “For a moment Ransom found something reassuring in the thought that the sorns were shepherds. Then he remembered that the Cyclops in Homer plied the same trade.”

When Hyoi was shot and killed (which, by the way did not see coming 🙁 ), I thought Lewis portrayed the aftermath in such a poignant way. How do you explain someone kills something for no other reason than they wanted to?

Discussion of @CSLewis’ Out of the Silent Planet over at Books and Beverages. Join in!

Click To Tweet

As I mentioned before, I haven’t read the rest of the series, but I hope there is more to come battling Weston and the forces behind him.

“…our cry is not merely “Hands off Malacandra.” The dangers to be feared are not planetary but cosmic, or at least solar, and they are not temporal but eternal. More than this it would be unwise to say.”

I also really enjoyed the Postscript and the letter between Ransom and the writer. Not only was it a creative way to gain more insight into the world Lewis created, but I like that we got more of what it was like when Ransom returned home.

Here’s some questions I was thinking about:

1. How the hey was Jack (aka Clive Staples aka my BFF) so creative?!
I mean, geez, save some genius for the rest of the world. Obviously this isn’t really a question I expect answered, but I still needed to get it off my chest :).

2. How does this rank against Lewis’ other fiction books for you?
It might be too early for me to make this statement (since I have to read the others), but I think Narnia still holds the top spot for Lewis’ fiction work. But please don’t take that to mean I didn’t enjoy this – I thoroughly did. It’s just hard to beat Aslan. 🙂

3. I love that Lewis used a sci-fi novel to take a look at humanity. Did that stick out to any of you?
It could be because I’ve been watching Breaking Bad and I love The Walking Dead, two shows that reveal both the bad and good of humanity in different/unique/dire circumstances, but that kept popping up. Take Weston. He’s arrogant and refuses to truly learn about the lives he encounters. He only sought power and dominance. Devine clearly didn’t grasp mo’ money, mo’ problems. Greed drove him, even when he encountered something no one else from planet Earth had. Then there was Ransom. Sweet Ransom. The complete opposite of the other two. I kinda think Lewis wrote pieces of his personality in Ransom’s character too.

4. Did you have a favorite of the Malacandra beings? Between the sorns, hrossa, Oyarsa and pfifltriggi?
I want to pick the pfifltriggi based solely on their name. I have no idea how to pronounce it, but it makes me laugh! This really is a tough one though, but I think I might have to go with the hrossa. They were the first we really encounter, so that probably has something to do with my bias.

What about you readers? As always, please share any other insights as well! Looking forward to reading what you thought of the book!

Where to buy: Amazon | | Christian Books

Filed Under: The Inklings Tagged With: book discussions, book review, books, C.S. Lewis, Christianity, classics, faith, God, inklings, J.R.R. Tolkien, Out of the Silent Planet, sci-fi, The Inklings Series, theology

  • Wesley

    1. Jack is the man! That’s the only way to explain it.
    2. I agree, it’s hard to be Aslan, but this was fun too
    3. I thought the moment that you mentioned about having to explain why someone would murder someone without any provocation or reason. Sorry big seal like thing, humans can just be awful and sinful and crappy and trigger happy. What did he call guns? Boom sticks?
    4.I liked the big seals but I thought the big insecty looking things were a little creepy!

    Since I don’t have a science/math brain I liked that we didn’t have to sit through really long winded science explanations about how the space shuttle worked and what all the buttons and stuff were. (I love Jules Verne but he gets super technical sometimes and my eyes roll back into my brain). I think it also puts us in the same mindset of our narrator, “I don’t know how I got here or what’s going on but I know that when I look out the window and see Earth, it’s not good”.

    • Jamie

      I kinda love your new names for the creatures 🙂 I agree – sorns sounded a bit creepy, but they seemed to turn out alright. And yes! Boom sticks!

      I totally agree with you on the science explanations! I’ve tried to read Jules Vernes, but can’t say it’s in my top favs of all time – and I think that’s part of the reason. So yeah, with Lewis, I wasn’t interested in how they would have made it into space as much as what happened when they got there and he definitely nailed it.

      I’m debating when to start Narnia in the Inklings series. I should do a survey, so you guys can help pick! There’s so many works to choose from!

  • David Russell Mosley

    Not to be too self-promotional, but I actually recently wrote a post on this book here: https://elflandletters.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/lewiss-cosmic-trilogy-out-of-the-silent-planet-and-the-angelic/.

    Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy is, in my opinion, one of the best works on Christian cosmology which actually deals with the other planets in the cosmos.

    • Jamie

      Thank you so much for sharing! I enjoyed reading your post! I’ve never thought how the creatures could be compared to the angels. I’m excited to continue reading this series and see it play out. I’ll definitely be keeping some of your thoughts in mind. Do you have a favorite of the three?

      • David Russell Mosley

        Perelandra is likely my favourite, or more correctly, it is the best of the three. However, I love reading That Hideous Strength. I look forward to reading it every time I sit down to re-read the Cosmic Trilogy. But it is only reading it after reading the first two. The three must be read together, in my opinion. That’s the only way they work in full.

        • Jamie

          Good to know and thanks again for stopping by!

  • Jamie

    One of the discussions I liked most between Ransom and Hyoi was about pleasure. Hyoi’s explanation that “A pleasure is full grown only when it it remembered…What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then-that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it.” WOW… so beautiful!!

    • Jamie

      Yes! I loved that discussion between them too! Thanks for sharing that quote, I forgot about that one. There were such beautiful moments in the story 🙂

  • Sarah Anne

    Ahh I fell behind on my blog reading so I’m a few days late to the party – hope you don’t mind! So I have to admit, I just don’t like this book, which makes me feel like a terrible Lewis fan. I read this series back in college when my boyfriend (now husband) recommended them and I think I just read them to impress him (guess it worked?). As much as I love fantasy, I’m really just not that into space/scifi books. But I read them anyway and found that I just couldn’t get into it. I also spend half the book concerned and angry that Ransom was kidnapped and taken to space in the first place.

    That being said, I was really excited to re-read this book and give it another chance. But….I can’t help it, I still just don’t like it. The thing is, I can’t exactly put my finger on why not. It’s well written, I really like most of the characters, and his descriptions of this absolutely fantastical place are wonderful. But it just didn’t hold my attention. But I guess there always has to be one book of an author’s you don’t like, right?

    Also, I’m super excited for the Hobbit next month, but I’m only going to read up until where the third movie is starting. I’ve been purposely not reading this book for years to prepare myself for the differences in the movies, and I’m slightly terrified that if I finish the Hobbit book, I’ll spend the entire 3 hours of Battle of Five Armies either yelling at the screen or sobbing because of the departure from Tolkien 🙂

    • Wesley

      I wondered for a long time how Ransom didn’t die on take off if he was just laying in bed. Wouldn’t the g-forces slam you into the floor and turn you into mush? lol, I hear you on being angry on Ransom’s behalf.

      • Jamie

        haha! Poor Ransom – I kinda heart him 🙂

    • Jamie

      Of course I don’t mind – happy to have you join in 🙂 :).

      I normally don’t read sci-fi either and I felt the same way you do about this one with Ender’s Game. I tried to like it a lot more, since everyone raved about it, but I think I was more creeped out that they called aliens “buggers” and they used Ender (if you haven’t read it, I promise neither is a spoiler!). And I promise you aren’t a terrible Lewis fan! Like you said, there’s always one book for sure!

      And your Hobbit reasoning cracks me up! I feel the same way, but after the first movie, I decided I needed to let go and make peace with the fact that the movies are going to be vastly different, so I have my prep talk before the movie and just roll with it ;). I’m super excited to discuss it too!

  • Jamie

    Another part I like in this book is when Ransom is being questioned by the sorns. It made me realize that we probably know more than we think. We just haven’t put it together. Like when the sorns were able to figure out different things about Ransom’s planet, paper, and terrestrial navigation just from a few things Ransom said. I guess I just like how Lewis described that conversation and it made me feel a little smarter 🙂 because there is probably a ton of stuff we subconsciously know.

    • Jamie

      I didn’t even think of that, but now that you point it out, that does make sense. It’s like when you talk something out with a friend, they are able to see things you wouldn’t even have noticed. I like feeling smarter too :).

  • Pingback: Announcing the Next Inklings Series Read | The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien -()

  • Pingback: February Inklings Series Read | The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis -()

  • Pingback: June Inklings Series Read | The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis -()

  • Pingback: July Inklings Series Read | The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien -()

  • Pingback: August Inklings Series Read | The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis -()

  • Pingback: November Inklings Series Read | Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis - Books and Beverages()

Let’s connect!

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Hola! I'm Jamie. A Photographer. A Dessert Specialist. A Reader. Del Taco's #1 fan. A Wannabe Inkling. An INSPYs Advisory Board Member. A fan of Sports (Internet high fives for the Lakers, FC Barcelona, and the Saints). A Traveler & I heart Jesus a whole lot. Read more here.

Follow on Bloglovin!

Follow on Bloglovin

The Inklings Series

Categories

  • 4 Questions
  • Beverages
  • Blogging Friends
  • Blogging Resources
  • Book Nerd Awesomeness
  • Book Review
  • Fantasy
  • Features and the Guest Post
  • Fiction
  • Fun Finds for the Book Nerd
  • Historical Fiction
  • History
  • Jody Hedlund Challenge 2015
  • Lets Change the World
  • Non Fiction
  • Personal
  • The Inklings
  • The Podcast
  • Walking Dead

Disclosure of Material Connection

Some of the book links in my posts are amazon affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only link to books I've read or items I believe you readers will enjoy (like Fun Finds!). I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Google+

Copyright © Jamie Lapeyrolerie

Popular Series

4 Questions
The Inklings Series
Book Reviews
Fun Finds for the Booknerd
Booknerd Awesomeness

List of Giveaway Winners

Recent Posts

  • 5 Facts About The Aleppo Codex | Conspiracy of Silence Tour + Giveaway
  • Fun Finds for the Booknerd #45
  • January Inklings Series Read | Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis
  • Conspiracy of Silence by Ronie Kendig | Book Review
  • The Shattered Vigil by Patrick W. Carr | Book Review

Copyright © 2019 · Beautiful Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in