While its interesting to disgress a little to discuss the other parts of the Trilogy - we seem to have neglected the thread topic which is about Out of the Silent Planet. It can be read on its own, and could it not be made into a stand alone film, maybe with minor adaptions? Seems to have some good ingredients for a space travel film (which probably about one third of the book is about) - then there are the different species on Malacandra, the Hnraka hunt, and the Eldila aspect. About one half of Perelandra is a novel of ideas (and that is harder to translate to film, a lot of it is introspective as far as the character of Ransom is concerned - another reason it would not an easy task to convert into a film).
So to return to Out of The Slient Planet anyone any more thoughts that?
I think the settings on Mars are more interesting insofar as CS Lewis was not a scientist or an author of Hard Sci Fi like Robert Heinlein; in an interview I have from him in one of two books of literary theory and assorted writings and short stories of science fiction, one of which contained the terrifying unfinished fourth book in the Space Trilogy, which was recovered from his manuscripts by his American aid, The Dark Tower (it was alleged by some of the many detractors of this unfinished work that the work was a forgery, but it reads like CS Lewis to me in its depictions of settings, and further scholarship has concluded it is genuine)*, CS Lewis, in an essay, and a discussion with Tolkien and (I think, Brian Aldiss) expressed a view that science fiction stories which existed only to provide an exotic setting for what could be as easily told in a Western or a historical novel were pointless - that Science Fiction was justified only when the story concept could be told nowhere else, which I think many science fiction writers would agree with, in that SF stories should have a scientific, speculative or futuristic component that uniquely, because of the setting, evokes a sense of wonder. An example of this would be the original Star Trek episode, penned by Harlan Ellison but poorly edited, “The City on the Edge of Forever,” and in contrast, as an example of a story that did not require a science fiction context in order to be told, but could have worked as a submarine novel, “The Balance of Terror”, although that remains one of my favorite episodes, or “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” which could have been high fantasy, in that it lacked a scientific premise, although again, the second pilot episode of Trek is one that I love, particularly the chilling scene where Gary Mitchell** after receiving superpowers, looks directly into the viewscreen, aware that Kirk and Spock were watching him through it.
Now, CS Lewis regarded his Space Trilogy as more fantasy, and so while the Robert A Heinlein type of story, which absolutely depended on use of the science fiction genre, as they revolved around problems of real world science and engineering (Heinlein also wrote fantasies, and some fantastic borderline SF stories, notably Waldo, and The Man Who Built a Crooked House), would rely on the space flight element as more central to the plot, to CS Lewis, it was just a means of getting to Mars, as his objective was to build a story involving Mars, Earth and Venus reflecting Christian morality, the doctrine of the Fall and original sin, and the mythology of the Music of the Spheres, which was beautiful. So the spacecraft in which Ransom travels with Devine and Weston is not well-described; it was likened to a glass house; it was implausible insofar as two scientists in a garage would be unlikely to be able to construct it (but if one changed the setting of the ship to a secret NICE facility, or made it visually clear that the property into which Ransom stumbled and accidentally found himself a stowaway on a spaceflight was operated by NICE, perhaps by having their logo, which was a male nude grasping a bolt of lightning, emblazoned on the building).
Any elaboration of the spaceflight beyond what the book writes would be at the expense of the more important material on Mars, so I would keep these scenes to a minimum, to basically show that Ransom accidentally boarded a spacecraft (which I would add, for believability, was an early NICE project, and perhaps reference it in a following adaptation of
That Hideous Strength, which features Devine as a villain, and which does explicitly references the wound on his foot that would not heal, that was inflicted in
Perelandra, along with other injuries which he was delivered from by one of the plants on the planet, by the diabolically posessed Weston, before Ransom killed him). Then I would shift the focus to the events on Malacandra, or Mars, as we call it.
It is worth noting in
Perelandra, which I think absolutely must be filmed - it would be entirely wrong to do
Out of the Silent planet and ignore the rest of the Space Trilogy, on a par with filming only the first book from The Lord of the Rings, CS Lewis dispensed with conventional spacecraft and instead relied on strange, luminous alabaster like caskets which transported Ransom and I think Weston to Venus in what I recall was a euphoric state for Ransom, analogous to suspended animation but not technological nor with the unpleasant side effects. Which was basically a Deus Ex Machina approach for continuing Ransom’s travels. In the case of Weston, if he also got there in that way - I can’t remember since it has been so long, I would probably change Perelandra slightly. In fact, a good opening shot might Venus viewed from the surface of the Earth, next to the moon, and then cut to a a closeup of an upgraded version of the spacecraft from Out of the Silent Planet (which CS Lewis described as being like a glass dome, which Ransom assumed was a glass greenhouse or winter garden, which I think was spherical and had some shielded apparatus in the center which Weston and Divine had to cover and uncover in order to control the vehicle en route to Mars), with Weston visible at the controls, in orbit of Venus and preparing to land, and this enhanced spacecraft would have the NICE logo and the initials N.I.C.E. on it, evocative of a NASA spacecraft. This could thread NICE through all three stories and provide forshadowing of the terror to come, inflicted by the demon-posessed disembodied Head of the NICE in That Hideous Strength and his minions, like Jules, Devine and the sadistic security director / secret police commander Mrs. Hardcastle.
The story could then cut to Ransom entering the Providential casket that would transport him to Perelandra/Venus either in the nude, or fully dressed, if people really don’t think the film could be shot with graceful nudity in the manner of Michaelangelo which is not prurient but artistic. Having him be dressed would allow Weston to wear an NICE flight suit, like those worn by pilots and astronauts, while on Venus, and a similar unlabelled flight suit of a WWII bomber/transport pilot style, but devoid of any insignia and with a generic appearance and different colors worn by the two components, looking like they were cobbled together from RAF and USAAF postwar surplus, so as to make the characters more visually distinctive, could be worn by Devine and Weston in Out of the Silent Planet. I think the stories should be set in 1959-62. This would keep the culture the same, as Britain was not yet transformed by the 1960s (James Bond and the Beatles were just becoming noticed, the cars and dress looked the same, a Tory, Harold MacMillan, was still in power, preserving the Churchillian culture, the Cunard ocean liners, the original Queen Mary and Queen Elisabeth, were still sailing and still popular, as jet airline travel across the Atlantic had only started in late 1958, and although diesels were being introduced, most of the railways were still in operation; also, importantly, the death penalty was still in effect and the last executions had not yet happened before its suspension and effective abolition, yet, computers that would explain the Pragmatron at NICE were commonplace, CS Lewis was still alive, and at Oxford as late as 61, and there was no Vietnam War, there were no Hippies, no Rockabillies, no Mods, and no counterculturals in general beyond the still largely unknown Beatniks.
It was the end of the golden era of Western civilization, really, but space travel existed and spacecraft were labelled with their national flags and emblems, and NICE clandestinely developing a super-advanced British spacecraft based on technology they oughtn’t to have possessed, given to them by the demon that possessed the Head, and implemented by scientists including Weston and Devine, who would have been chosen for the Mars flight by virtue of an understanding of the technology, physical science (and orbital mechanics), math skills, and specifically in Weston’s case, sociology and linguistics, which is why he alone flew to Venus, would make sense. It would be good to have slide rules either used in flight by Weston and Devine and/or carried on their person in Out of the Silent Planet. Britain did still develop advanced technology in isolation as late as the 1960s, for example, computers, fighters like the English Electric Lightning, nuclear bombs, nuclear submarines, and so on.
Moving back to
Perelandra, after Ransom is showing departing in the supernatural means of transport for Venus, it would either cut to his arrival on Venus/Perlandra, cut back to Weston, if my view prevailed and
Perelandra was filmed with non-risque implied nudity as per CS Lewis, it would cut back to Weston and an unnamed copilot on the larger improved version of the ship from Out of the Silent Planet, with the NICE initials and logo painted on the hull. An alarm could sound as they prepared to enter the atmosphere; there could be an explosion, the copilot could try to fix it but would be burned to death by a malfunctioning propulsion system, and the spacecraft would start to break apart and depressurize, at which time Weston would be rescued, deus ex machina, and be depicted exiting the strange casket in the nude, as Ransom would when he arrived. This would provide a two man crew (perhaps Weston, being senior, blamed the failure of the Malacandra mission on Devine, but Devine was reinstated when Weston failed to return).
* The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction had this to say; “It was strongly suggested by Kathryn Lindskoog (1934-2003) in
The C.S. Lewis Hoax (
1988) that the Reverend Hooper – Lewis's secretary for only one month – forged various items of posthumously published Lewis material included in
The Dark Tower, a charge which has been strenuously (and in the end effectively) denied. Lindskoog offered a vigorous counter-rebuttal in "The Dark Scandal: Science Fiction Forgery" (Summer/Fall 1992
Quantum #42), but in that year it was revealed that she herself had been forging letters to do with the Hooper issue – indeed, she admitted as much, though she described her fourteen forged letters as a lighthearted "prank". What there can be no doubt about is that much of the work assembled by Hooper has affected readers as being both sexually poisonous and egregiously amateur.”
I disagree that the unfinished draft of
The Dark Tower is either egregiously amateur or sexually poisonous, although it certainly had allusions to the pernicious evil of homosexual rape, which many homosexuals experienced in their youth, and furthermore question the legitimacy of criticizing the writing of unpublished and incomplete fragments, which in the case of most writers, will not, in their first draft, be as good as the finished product, and in the case of
The Dark Tower, he clearly abandoned the story and wrote either
Perelandra or
That Hideous Strength next (I myself think
The Dark Tower was originally intended the third and final installment in the series, but Lewis ran out of inspiration, the process by which he received inspiration for his works being something he extensively documented, and thus abandoned the work he had done so far, in favor of
That Hideous Strength, which has a similarly dark and conspiratorial tone in its most dramatic and terrifying segments,
**played by the same actor who played Deputy Commander Dr. Frank Poole (the astronaut killed by HAL-9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, whose unsuccessful rescue by David Bowman set the stage for the famous “Open the pod bay doors please HAL” “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that” dialogue. 2001 is another example of a story that requires a science fiction context.
