Perelandra
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| Perelandra | |
 First edition cover |
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| Author | C. S. Lewis |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Space Trilogy |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | The Bodley Head |
| Publication date | 1943 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 978-0-7432-3491-7 |
| Preceded by | Out of the Silent Planet |
| Followed by | That Hideous Strength |
Perelandra (also titled Voyage to Venus in a later edition published by Pan Books) is the second book in the Space Trilogy of C. S. Lewis, set in the Field of Arbol. It was first published in 1943.
[edit] Plot summary
The story starts with the philologist Elwin Ransom, some years after his return from Mars at the end of Out of the Silent Planet, receiving a new mission from Oyarsa, the angelic ruler of Mars. Ransom is to travel to Perelandra (Venus), where is located a new Garden of Eden and a new Adam and Eve, to oppose the diabolically-inspired human physicist Professor Weston, who has been sent to tempt the Eve figure.
Ransom arrives in Venus and finds it to be an oceanic paradise. One day is about 23 Earth hours, in contrast to Earth and Mars with their (roughly) 24 and 25 hour days, respectively. The sky is golden and very bright but opaque. The sun cannot be seen; hence the night is pitch black with no stars visible.
Strange, mythical creatures roam the planetary sweet-water ocean, which is dotted with floating rafts of vegetation. These rafts look like small islands, and actually have plant life growing on them and animals living on them; however, due to the ocean underneath, they are in a constant state of motion. A single mountain, called the Fixed Land, exists on the planet.
Ransom quickly meets Tinidril, the Queen of the planet; unlike the inhabitants of Mars in Out of the Silent Planet, she is human (this is said to be because Perelandra was populated after Maleldil became human; that is, after the birth of Jesus), but with green skin. She and the King of the planet are the only human inhabitants and are the Eve and Adam of their world. Living on the floating rafts Ransom has seen, they are forbidden to sleep on the "Fixed Land".
The rafts or floating islands are indeed Paradise, not only in the sense that they provide a pleasant and care-free life (until the arrival of Weston) but also in the sense that Ransom is for weeks and months naked in the presence of a beautiful, also naked woman without once lusting after her or being tempted to seduce her.
The plot thickens when Professor Weston arrives in a spaceship and lands in a part of the ocean quite close to the Fixed Land. He at first announces that he is a reformed man, but appears to still be in search of power. He pledges allegiance to what he calls the "Life-Force", and subsequently shows signs of demonic possession. The new Weston finds the Queen, and tries to tempt her into defying God and spending a night on the fixed land. Ransom believes that he must act as a counter-tempter.
Well versed in the Bible and Christian theology, Ransom realizes that if the pristine green lady who never heard of Evil succumbs to Weston's arguments, the Fall of Man will be re-enacted on Perelandra. He does his best during day after day of lengthy arguments illustrating various approaches to temptation, but the demonic Weston shows super-human brilliance in debate (though when "off-duty" he displays moronic, asinine behaviour and small-minded viciousness) and moreover appears in no need of sleep.
With the demon/Weston on the verge of winning, the desperate Ransom hears in the night what he gradually realises is a Divine voice, commanding him to physically destroy the Tempter. Ransom is highly reluctant, and debates with the divine (inner) voice for the entire duration of the night. A curious twist is introduced here; whereas the name "Ransom" is derived from the title "Ranolf's Son", it can also refer to a reward given in exchange for a treasured life. Recalling this, and recalling that his God would (and supposedly has) sacrifice Himself in a similar situation, Ransom decides to confront the Tempter outright.
Ransom attacks his opponent bare-handedly, using only physical force. The Tempter, unable to withstand this despite his superior abilities of rhetoric, flees, whereupon Ransom chases him over the ocean, both riding the backs of giant fish. During a fleeting truce, the 'real' Weston momentarily re-inhabits his body, and the conversation between himself and Ransom displays Lewis' horrific vision of what Hell is: the damned soul is not consigned to the pain of flames, but is absorbed and "digested" by the Devil, eventually losing its personality completely.
While Ransom is distracted by his horror and his feelings of pity and compassion for the utterly damned Weston, the demon takes control of the body, surprises Ransom, and tries to drown him. The two find themselves trapped in a subterranean cavern. Ransom seemingly kills Weston, and escapes the cavern, searching for a route to the surface. Weston's body, horribly injured but still animated by the Devil, follows him. Finally, Ransom smashes the Weston's head with a stone in another cavern and consigns the body to volcanic flames. Slightly prior to this point, Weston had begun to lose his human side and he started acting more like a mandrill, and looked like a balding orangutan. He also at some points acts like a cat.
Returning to the planet's surface after a long travail through the caverns of Perelandra, Ransom recuperates from his injuries, all of which heal fully except for a bite on his heel which he sustained at some point in the battle, which continues bleeding for the rest of his life.
Ransom meets the King and Queen together with the Oyéresu of Mars and Venus, all of whom celebrate the prevention of a second biblical "Fall" and begin to create their utopia. The story climaxes with Ransom's vision of the essential truth of life in the Solar System, and possibly of the nature of God: strongly paralleling the journeys of Dante in the Divine Comedy.
His mission accomplished, he returns, rather reluctantly, to Earth to continue the fight against the forces of evil on their own territory.
[edit] Discussion
Perelandra was published in 1943, one year after A Preface to Paradise Lost, and deals with many of the same issues: the value of hierarchy, the dullness of Satan, and the nature of unfallen sexuality, for instance. To an extent, it can be viewed as a commentary on Milton's poem, but a commentary which is intelligible to a reader ignorant of the original.
Lewis's description of Perelandra's environment and rotation period is, of course, inconsistent with the actual conditions on Venus, but astronomical observation at the time of writing of the novel had not yet positively determined this to be the case. A Venus largely or wholly covered by a worldwide ocean was a common theme in science fiction works of the time -- a logical, though eventually proven erroneous, inference from the planet having a thick cloud cover which led to the assumption that there would be a heavy rainfall and that the water would form such an ocean.
The third volume of the trilogy, That Hideous Strength, is set on Earth and, perhaps inevitably, has rather a different tone than the prior two volumes; Ransom is a key character but is "off-stage" for much of the action.
[edit] External links
- A review by Tal Cohen
- Perelandra publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Quotations & Allusions in Perelandra
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