Subject: (urth) Sweet Home Malacandra

From: Dan Parmenter <dan at lec.com>
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 12:52:28 +0000

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

Rostrum:

> 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:

> 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:

> 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

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 15:35:09 +0000

> 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