Sweet Home Malacandra

Dan Parmenter30 May 2000, 12:52original

Alga:

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I can see why Lewis never published "Prelude to Space." It's awful, just awful!

Rostrum:

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Yeah, I don't know that Walter Hooper is doing Lewis any favors publishing some of this stuff, but it does give a pretty clear picture of his thoughts on the matter.

I thought that Hooper had been thoroughly discredited. I haven't seen "Prelude to Space" but isn't THE DARK TOWER fragment that Hooper published thought to be of questionable origin? Wolfe himself dismissed it in some interview or other it on the grounds that he felt that he was pretty good at recognizing authors' styles and it didn't read like Lewis to him. I seem to recall reading a long and tedious web page devited to this topic. I thought it was an interesting read. And earlier Rostrum noted:

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It's a fine point, but he didn't think space travel and immortality are themselves sins, rather they are a bad idea because they would allow sin to grow beyond it's current bounds of time (a lifetime) and space (Earth).

To which Alga replied:

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I would appreciate more on this. I've read these books (not for years, true) without conciously picking up these points.

I think that this is only really explicitly stated in THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH, the third (and weirdest, IMHO) book. Shellac

Michael Straight30 May 2000, 15:35original

↳ follows, by subject match Dan Parmenter

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On 30 May 2000, Dan Parmenter wrote: And earlier Rostrum noted:

I think that this is only really explicitly stated in THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH, the third (and weirdest, IMHO) book.

There's also the scene in OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET where the scientist who captured Ransom is on "trial" and he gives this eloquent defense of humanity's manifest destiny to conquer the stars, which becomes ridiculous when translated into the Malacandrian language. I can't remember it exactly, but there's a part that, when translated, goes something like, "He says that humans are never satisfied and always want more and compete with each other and that only the strong survive, and that these are good things and that therefore humanity has a right to spread everywhere." I don't remember for sure, but I wouldn't be suprised if there's also a hint of the idea in Ransom and Weston's conversations in PERELANDRA before he becomes the Un-man. -Rostrum

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