Professor Weston (full name Edward Rolles Weston) is arguably one of C. S. Lewis's greatest satanic characters. An eminent physicist on earth, he first appears in Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, which is the first in Lewis’s Space Trilogy. He is defeated by the novel's protagonist Elwin Ransom and the Oyarsa, the ruling angel or eldil of Mars (known to its inhabitants as "Malacandra"), but he returns in the second book of the trilogy in an attempt to wreak havoc on Perelandra (Venus), the "new Eden."
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In Out of the Silent Planet, Weston first appears with his accomplice, Dick Devine (who later becomes Lord Feverstone in That Hideous Strength), attempting to abduct a mentally impaired youngster named Harry. They plan to take him to Malacandra (Mars) as a human sacrifice. It is then that they are surprised by Elwin Ransom, the main character of the novel, who is known to Devine. Devine persuades Weston to abduct Ransom instead.
In the course of their flight to Malacandra Ransom overhears a conversation between Weston and Devine that discloses to him their sinister purpose in abducting him. Shortly after their landing on Malacandra Weston and Devine attempt to drag Ransom to a towering, distant figure making its way across a lake to meet them. However, an accident occurs, in the form of a dangerous fish-type or crocodilian animal in the water breaking Ransom’s captors’ concentration, and allowing him to flee. In the course of his adventures on Malacandra, Ransom learns that the Oyarsa, the being to whom he was to be ‘sacrificed’, wanted only to speak with one of his kind. That is, a human. Weston, however, is of such a paranoid bent, that he can not conceive of another creature not wishing to do him harm: also, human sacrifice is the sort of superstition that he is conditioned to expect from "primitive" cultures. It is eventually revealed that the (immediate) purpose of Weston’s and Devine’s journey to Malacandra is to mine gold, which the planet has in abundance (this is primarily Devine’s desire, who is obsessed with money). Weston’s plan is to usher in a new age of space colonization in order to ensure that man and his descendants will, in some form, continue to survive for all eternity (the idea was actually borrowed from Stapledon's Last and First Men). The seeming idealism of this plot is corrupted by Weston’s obviously callous and Machiavellian attitude towards all other forms of life (including intelligent ones).
Weston’s sudden appearance on Perelandra is a great surprise to Ransom, who is, once again, the accidental hero of the piece. However, Weston has undergone some changes since his last appearance. Perhaps the most notable, and certainly the most important, change is that he no longer wants to spread ‘the human race’, but to spread ‘spirituality’. In his understanding of Spirituality, Weston has come to the fatal misunderstanding that God and the Devil are one, and calls God and the Devil into him. The Devil, it would appear, can’t resist an open door into a soul, and from that moment on, Professor E.R. Weston effectively ceases to be.
Weston’s animated corpse continues to make a considerable nuisance of itself, tempting the Lady of Perelandra (the new Eve) into corruption, while Ransom tries to undo the damage the Un-man (Ransom’s name for Weston’s animated body) is making. Eventually Ransom, realizing that he will not verbally be able to defeat the Un-man--and motivated by Maleldil--physically attacks the Un-man and both are badly wounded during the ensuing fight.
Weston's consciousness appears to occasionally resurface, but it is impossible to distinguish whether anything he says after this point is Weston or the Devil working through him. Indeed, Ransom (and, presumably by extension, Lewis) comes to the conclusion that:
‘…it made little difference. There was, no doubt, a confusion of persons in damnation: what Pantheists falsely hoped of Heaven bad men really received in Hell. They were melted down into their Master, as a lead soldier slips down and loses his shape in the ladle held over the gas ring. The question whether Satan, or one whom Satan has digested, is acting on any given occasion, has in the long run no clear significance.’
Weston’s body is eventually destroyed beyond repair by Ransom in the tunnels beneath Perelandra’s crust and rolled into a pit of subterranean fire.
Ransom, having carved a monument to the great physicist into the wall on the outside of the caverns, leaves the innards of Perelandra behind him, and makes his way up the Fixed Land, to meet the angels, and the rest of his adventure.
Weston may be a caricature of Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902) an English South African businessman and imperialist politician. Like Rhodes, Weston is a racist; he is also amoral, rapacious, and hates God and religion. In a passing comment in That Hideous Strength, it is said that Great Britain has produced both heroes and villains, that for every King Arthur, there is a traitor Mordred, for every Sydney (the medieval poet), there is a Cecil Rhodes. In "Perelandra", Weston mentions his liking of the book of which Rhodes said "it made me who I am”: Winwood Reade’s The Martyrdom of Man, which expounded the ideology of secular humanism.
There is a glancing allusion to George Bernard Shaw: Weston's speech on Malacandra, like Back to Methuselah, ends with the words "It is enough for me that there is a Beyond", and Weston shares Shaw's (and Henri Bergson's) belief in the Life Force. Another possible influence is the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the goal of whose philosophy was the advent of the "super-man". Weston is also similar to the villain Saruman from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
The choice of the name "Weston" might be more than accidental, considering that in his speech in Out of the Silent Planet he presents himself very much as the proponent of "Western Civilization" in its most expansionist and aggressive mode. (The names of the main villains in That Hideous Strength, "Wither" and "Frost", are clearly meant to reflect their characters.)
Professor Weston can also stand for the scientific elitism that despises all other types of knowledge, see Scientism.
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