Urth Net
Echoes of C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy
When I first read Nightside, there were a couple of things that reminded me of C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy.
[Minor spoilers for Perelandra follow]
In the second book, Perelandra, the protagonist, Ransom, is in a situation where it seems the Devil himself (or his representative) is trying to do a Very Bad Thing and Ransom wonders why God seems to be allowing it...
"Had Hell a prerogative to work wonders? Why did Heaven work none?
...he was forced to perceive that his own coming to Perelandra was
at least as much of a marvel as the Enemy's. That miracle on the
right side, which he had demanded, had in fact occured. He himself
was the miracle...If the issue lay in [God's] hands, Ransom and the
Lady were those hands. The fate of a world really depended on how
they behaved in the next few hours" (Perelandra, p. 140-142).
This seems so close to Silk's formulation of the Outsider's revelation, "I am to receive no help, because I am help" that I'm inclined to believe it must have been an influence on Wolfe.
The connection thing is that, especially in Nightside when I thought he was purely a villain, Remora's speech patterns reminded me a whole lot of Withers from That Hideous Strength.
Speaking of influences, people keep saying that Chesterton's Father Brown stories are an obvious one. It's been a while since I've read them, but I just don't see it - other than that the protagonists are both priests, I don't see any real similarities. What am I missing?
I know Wolfe has mentioned that he is a Chesterton fan (and here let me put in a strenuous plug for The Man Who Was Thursday, an amazing book), but has he voiced an opinon about Lewis's works?
-Rostrum