Perelandra

I don't believe I'm exaggerating when I say that the ending contains the most beautiful writing I've ever read. And before the ending, some of the grittiest horror combined with spiritual genius.

I recently re-read this book, and it returned me at once to the joy and strangeness of the first time I read it.

Lewis offers up the theory that perhaps what we know in this world as myth and archetype exists in reality on other planets. The book brings that thought to vivid life. It detonates all the power and perplexity of the first chapters of "Genesis" and replays "Paradise Lost" on the floating blissful islands of Venus.

Though the endnote is one of glorious joy, few have been as good at depicting evil as Lewis was. Written at the… show more.

Overall, I’m more a fan of The Narnia Chronicles, but Lewis’ lesser-known Space Trilogy is also very good, with many of the same themes of ancient evil versus ageless good. Perelandra, the second in the trilogy, is self-contained and doesn’t really require the other books. 

In Perelandra, Lewis re-imagines our entire solar system, filling it with massive numbers of amazing creatures. The eldila, angelic beings that guard planets and their denizens, send the human protagonist, Dr. Ransom, on a mission to save Perelandra, the world we call Venus. Perelandra is in a kind of primeval Eden-type… show more.

C S Lewis is best known as the author of the Narnia books, but he wrote all kinds of books, including a science fiction trilogy of which Perelandra is the second (but freestanding) book. Elwin Ransom is summoned to a largely ocean-covered Venus, to take part in an epic struggle between good and evil.  Venus has its own Adam and Eve, who have not yet succumbed to temptation as Adam and Eve did on Earth, and Ransom’s task is to save them from the evil Professor Weston who has arrived on the planet with an agenda of his own. 

If… show more.