#meeting an English professor in the woods who was def trying to live his best Waldon Pond life

[hamletthedane]

You think if ran away to the catskills to live in a hemlock tree six feet in diameter and trained a falcon to hunt for me, anybody would notice?

[ilosttrackofthings]

A comparatively brief rundown of C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy (because I love it and need to babble but also it is looong and no one will read it so you can all read this instead):

Book 1: Out of the Silent Planet

spoi|ers: we’re the Silent Planet

this dude named Ransom is taking a proper English walk and hears sounds of distress

he discovers some random escaping from our two villains and helps him get away

no good deed goes unpunished and he’s captured in the random’s place

the villains drag him on their spaceship and blast off into space

they all spend a few months just chilling because it’s a long trip to Mars and the whole kidnapping issue is gonna have to wait

the villains wanna make nice with the Martians and need Ransom to be their human sacrifice to the Martian god to really solidify this new interplanetary friendship

Ransom, not wanting to do any of that, escapes when they land

turns out there are lots of different kinds of Martians and he chills with the really tall otter people for a few months

also Ransom is a linguist and learns to speak their language because he’s cool like that

at one point he sees a little kid talking to their imaginary friend and tries to do that adult thing where he pretends to talk to him too

and the kid is just like “...what?”

because it’s not an imaginary friend

it’s an angel eldil

Ransom convinces his otter buddy to stay out on the lake fishing even though it’s time to come in and otter buddy dies because this was a sin and Ransom feels SUPER GUILTY for corrupting his bro and getting him killed

man, sin is harsh

Ransom ends up leaving for reasons and goes to deal with our villains, who are still running around on Mars somewhere

he has more adventures, one involving a cave that is described in minute detail because it’s a MARTIAN cave, don’t you care just so much?

all the Martians think Ransom’s cool

the ~advanced ones the villains wanna deal with make a frieze depicting Ransom’s adventures

all the humans on the frieze look like Ransom

everyone gets to meet the god of Mars

who is not a god, he’s another angel eldil, he’s just in charge of Mars/the spirit of Mars

he also thinks Ransom’s cool

Ransom is allowed to take the villains home so they won’t cause Mars anymore trouble

they naturally plot to murder him

one of them dies, the other escapes, and Ransom goes off to enjoy normal Earth things like sandwiches and tea and beds

Book 2: Perelandra

that’s Venus

because Ransom is so cool, and also the only human being who’s not a villain and has been off of Earth, he’s sent to Venus

they’re still at the Eden stage and it’s time for the snake to show up and make his offer

Ransom basically gets in a glass box and is carried through space by the eldil

he’s all sunburned on one side and ~Eve laughs her ass off when she meets him

Venus is all oceans with floating islands like that island of insanity in Life of Pi

[that was literally the only part of Life of Pi I liked and this connection is why]

all the animals are super chill because there’s no sin yet

Ransom ultimately realizes that he might have to die to stop Venus from Falling

he decides he’s cool with that and also recognizes that his name is appropriate like he’s a character in a story

such a nerd

I love him

he does not die

Venus does not Fall

it’s all good

Book 3: That Hideous Strength

new main characters!

professor who just wants to be in the cool clique at work and his wife who’s having second thoughts about this marriage

the wife freaks out one morning when she sees a picture of an executed murderer in the paper because she had a dream about him the night before

there is a LOT of stuff about how the professor’s college has this pretty little wooded area that they’ve sold off secretly as part of some mundane-sounding measure and it’s all gonna be torn up even though people LIVE THERE and the town goes into chaos but it’s too late, the damage is done

the professor is taken out of town by his new friends, who all work for the people who bought the land

they say they’ll give him a job, tell him to write up some blatantly false propaganda for them to keep the little people thinking the way they want

he starts to realize that this fancy new job is too good to be true

also they’re not paying him

whenever he tries to leave, the harmless figurehead stops him

he makes sure to leave when the figurehead is occupied in his office inside, no way he could get in his way

he barely makes it out of the house before he sees the figurehead, not inside, but in the distance, coming across the lawn

it is not even the creepiest thing

the Creepiest Thing is the head

ohmygosh the head

the head of the executed murderer, removed from his corpse, hooked up to machines to put saliva in the mouth and air in the throat and to make it talk

this is how they communicate with demons their outerspace friends

the head is a stepping stone to their ideal person: no body, just a mind, free and untethered by silly wants and needs and UGH I’M STILL THINKING ABOUT THE HEAD IT’S SO GROSS

sidenote: THE MOOOOOOOON

the moon is inhabited

aliens live under the surface

the ones on the dark side are cool, they’re like any of the other neato aliens we’ve met

the ones on the side that’s locked facing us have been corrupted by humanity’s sin and they’re so disgusted with their own flesh that they build robots of themselves so that moon-husband doesn’t have to have sex with his moon-wife, he can have sex with her robot double instead, clearly way less gross

they’ve already perfected the whole body-free thing and they’re trying to force it on their non-corrupted moon-brethren 

anyway

back to the story

the professor’s wife has been doing her own thing

she’s trying to deal with these ~weird dreams~ she’s been having but the only help she finds is in some kinda awkward people and no one wants to hang out with that

only then their sleepy little town becomes a warzone because of the destroying the land and the professor’s propaganda and also the people her husband is with send someone to kidnap her so yeah, she’ll take the awkward people

at this point we’re like halfway through the book and there’s been no space stuff and no Ransom and you’re probably wondering what this has to do with anything but it’s a really dense book so there’s really no stopping now

the wife ends up in a kinda weird house with a weird collection of people and also a bear

the bear is great

he is a puppy

a very tiny englishwoman bosses him out of her kitchen

the best

all of these people know about the bad guys the professor is with, some of them were displaced by the land being taken

they’re all here to help the guy upstairs

no, not God

literally the guy upstairs

who is Ransom

freaking finally

he’s kinda frail but also not? and he seems super young but also old?

basically his space adventures messed him up but not in a bad way

he is the New Pendragon

this happens a lot, Pendragons, the True Spirit of England having to be fought for and preserved

he’s not Arthur reborn, he’s just ... filling that role or whatever in these modern times

and also he is not a king

def. not

but he’s in charge and also we need to find Merlin

he’s buried in that quaint little wood the baddies are tearing up

and also the wife is psychic, that’s why she has the dreams

so they need her to tell them where to find Merlin

remember that this is the Space Trilogy?

everyone’s going after Merlin at once

he gets away by pretending to be a tramp

because he’s Merlin

he goes straight to Ransom because he knows what’s up

they do lots of cool magic stuff

the spirits of like three different planets come upon Merlin to infuse him with power and it’s just a really pretty section of the book with each spirit overflowing to briefly alter the emotional state of everyone nearby in really cool ways

Merlin goes off to fight the bad guys by freeing all their animal test subjects and setting them on them in a horrible massacre

the bear was also captured by the bad guys previously and is ashamed of his actions during the fight

it’s sad

Merlin dies from all the power

oh also the surviving villain from book 1 was one of the baddies here

he dies

the professor is saved

he and his wife reunite with a new outlook on their marriage

Ransom gets to go back to Venus because his work is done and he loved it so much there

and that is the Space Trilogy

where is the movie series?