Name: Space Trilogy
ISBN: 9780020223504

Space Trilogy

The Cosmic Trilogy relates the interplanetary travels of Ransom, C.S. Lewis's ill-informed and terrified victim who leaves Earth much against his will and who, in the first book of the trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, published by the Bodley Head in 1938, encounters the imaginary and delightful world of Macalandra. In the second book, Perelandra (1943), Ransom is transported to a world of sweet smells and delicious tastes, a new Garden of Eden in which is enacted, with a difference, the story of Temptation. That Hideous Strength (1945) completes the trilogy and finds Dr Ransom returned from his travels in space and living in an English university town - where the Senior Common Room is given a mysterious depth, a more than earthly dimension which such things, in the author's view, always have in life. C.S. Lewis believed that popular science was the new mythology of his age, and in The Cosmic Trilogy he ransacks the uncharted territory of space and makes that mythology the medium of his spiritual imagination.

What Hacker News says

samizdisSep 2026

Not sure whether this will "keep the brain working", but it definitely tied some knots in mine: The Space Trilogy [1], by C.S. Lewis, blends sci-fi with spirituality and classic mythology. The books should probably be read in sequence, as they follow the adventures of the same main character, but Lewis's almost fractal writing style in wildly trippy sections in the first two (which bear hallmarks from the New Testament's Revelations), exhausted me. The last book in the trilogy is worth reading in isolation; it deals with problematic uses of science (eugenics etc), government capture, media manipulation/propaganda, and also human psychology/power relationships etc. It also has its mystic/mythological stuff (Merlin of Arthurian legend is a character in the book), but what gave me cold chills was the creeping dystopian takeover of societal norms that certainly finds echoes in our modern world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Trilogy

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SugarReflexJun 2026

I was blown away by Crime and Punishment. I truly felt like I was the main character, and I read it with feverish sweat and dread for my impending doom. I cringed and felt terrible sadness at the poor little lives of certain individuals. So much woe and tragedy. I was glad to see how it turned out though.

I'm currently reading Karamazov and it's good to have something a bit more jovial and dry witted.

The main difficulty is the names. The names make it so hard.

I love the Space Trilogy by Lewis but I lose my place when he describes a place. Dostoevsky is better at describing people (and bringing them to life in your mind) than Lewis is at describing a landscape.

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quirkMay 2026

Came here to say this. The Space Trilogy is one of the best series I've ever read. That Hideous Strength reminds me a LOT of what's happening these days. Even moreso than 1984. Would love to see a great director tackle it as a film.

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cubesnooperJul 2022

I’m reading the third book right now and so far the series has been a real struggle to get through. In the first two I found the setting mildly interesting, but mixed with uninteresting characters, dialogue, and plot, with writing that was entirely too verbose and with too many repetitive phrases (like “he raised an eyebrow,“ which happens about once a chapter and sometimes even multiple times per page—see also chuckling, rolling eyes, and snorting, which occur at about the same frequency). Clearly not everybody finds this irritating but I definitely did.

I don’t think I had any problems like that with the writing of other fantasy series like Lord of the Rings and A Game of Thrones. Nor with two other trilogies I read for the first time this year, C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy and The Three‐Body Problem.

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ThorentisJul 2022

Not quite a dystopia, but of you (like me) also loved those books, then a highly recommend CS Lewis' Space Trilogy. One of my favourite series of all time, especially the last one.

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jimmygrapesJun 2022

Perelandra (the second book in the "Space Trilogy") by C. S. Lewis is probably the most impactful book I've read in recent years. I read it once when I was in my early teens and it made no sense and was quite the slog, and I certainly didn't understand the underlying concepts at the time.

Re-reading it in my late 30s blew my mind. I wish I had the words to describe why. Best I can do is that it solidified (dare I say explained) many of the spiritual aspects I have been struggling with lately.

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