Perelandra: An Experiment in Imagination, Faith and Reason

Perelandra is the second book of C.S.Lewis’ brilliant science fiction trilogy. Lewis was drawn to the emerging genre of science fiction as a way to explore metaphysical themes in fiction. At the time both fantasy and science fiction were relegated to the unrespectable pulp fiction fringe market. “Serious” fiction was churned out by the likes of D.H.Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and other writers more concerned with adult characters and plot lines — meaning mostly adults who were committing adultery.

For those who are unfamiliar with Perelandra, Lewis’ hero, a professor of philology named Edwin Ransom (purportedly a thinly disguised J.R.R.Tolkien) is transported to Venus where he encounters an unfulfilled world and an innocent green complexioned Eve. A great battle ensues between Ransom and an atheistic scientist named Weston. It is in and through this astonishingly imaginative Edenic epic that Lewis conceals and reveals his incisive intellect, his vast learning and his medievally inspired Christian cosmology. Together they unlock a story that is breathtaking in its power to inspire the heart and enlighten the mind.

The opening chapters are told in the first person as Lewis relates a hike from a train station to a cottage where he is to meet Ransom. The walk along the dark country lane is one of horror. The narrator feels a…