Amazon.co.uk: Out of the Silent Planet: AND Perelandra (Voyager Classics): C. S. Lewis: Books

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A special edition containing the first two novels in C.S. Lewis's classic Cosmic Trilogy which tells the adventures of Dr Ransom, a Cambridge academic, who is kidnapped and transported first to Mars, where he discovers an amazing range of rational and spiritual creatures, and then to Venus.

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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

An adventure in the timelessness of traditional values, 28 Nov 2001

By A Customer

'Out of the Silent Planet' is the first of a trilogy of unique space novels depicting the intrigues of the evil 'bent one' and his servants, pitted against humanity and reality. The battleground is our solar system and our earth the home of Ransom, a run of the mill academic with a penchant for traditional moral values. These are tested; they mature and surprise us by their true worth.
Ransom meets the opportunist and the scientific idealist in what could be called a situation against all odds. Common sense, however, and a respect for that which he does not understand are his weapons; marvelously simple, yet too lowly for those driven by greed or the need to assert their scientific idealism on the rest of creation.
The true situation on Mars and ultimately that on the earth are revealed much to the annoyance of the evil one.
In 'Perelandra' Ransom discovers his true destiny in a situation strangely reminiscent of Eden and Calvary. Temptation arrives in all its might and no doubt Screwtape could learn a few things here.
C.S. Lewis' familiarity with the methods of the 'deceiver' is astounding.
Who are the great boogie-men we read about in these pages?
What drives and haunts them?
Why is man so tempted to surrender his humanity in favor of the next best utilitarian idealism - his birthright for a cup of soup?
Moral issues are at stake and these are as relevant today as they were sixty years ago.

C.S. Lewis would no doubt be delighted to know that steel spheres and glass windows will just not do in space.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Not at all what I expected., 8 April 2005

By	E. Porter-daniels "Irenicas" (Reading, UK) - See all my reviews

I, like most people I think, came to these stories having only ever read CS Lewis' children's fiction (namely the Narnia chronicles). This meant that it was quite a shock for me to read something like this which was so adult and yet so sensitive.

And that is, in my eyes, the real achievement of Out of the Silent Planet, and to some extent Perelandra. It keeps the same gloriously fantastical slant of his childrens books, but wraps this whimsy around a much darker core, and addresses some seriously weighty subjects - the nature of humanity, the nature of God, and the nature or morality.

This serious philosophical exploration (and it mostly certainly is philosophy) is simply held in a piece of fiction. You feel like you should have to spend time shredding away the layers of story around this philosophy, but in fact the opposite is true - the fiction leads you gently into the complex core of these novels, and then extricates you once more when you are done. It is a true masterwork of authorship.