Conference noted::sf

I enjoy many of Lewis' works, the Narnia books foremost among them.

Another good one is "The Screwtape Letters", recently mentioned
in TRIVIA; this is a collection of epistles supposedly written by
a senior devil to his nephew, who is trying to tempt his first
soul. The junior devil keeps having problems, and Screwtape delivers
hints and suggestions that present an unnerving view of temptation
from the other side. I remember reading that when "Screwtape"
was first published, several people, including ministers, wrote
in complaining that it was anti-Christian and dangerous. They
obviously missed the point altogether.

Another favorite: "The Great Divorce". This one might be called
"Heaven and Hell According to Lewis"; it depicts his allegorical
view of heaven and hell, what it's like to be in either place,
and whether or not - and how - one can get from one to the other.
The style is light and quite readable, but it hits home.

-b

	Lewis was a great writer on the Christian faith and I have his book 
"Mere Christianity" if any of you want to read it.  I thought it was a really 
good explanation of Christianity, etc.

					Johnny O.

  Yes, I like C. S. Lewis very much.  I was first introduced to "Mere Christi-
  anity" in eighth grade, but I didn't discover his fiction until college.  

  Of the trilogy, I liked "Perelandra" the best.  I could really identify with
  the King and the Lady in their dealing with temptation.  I could almost ima-
  gine that I was back in the Garden of Eden to witness what led to the Fall.
  I was a little lost on some of the allegory in "That Hideous Strength", how-
  ever.

  Discovering and loving a series of children's books in one's twenties may
  sound a bit weird, but what made the Chronicles of Narnia special to me was
  the Christian message that Lewis built into the stories.  The stories are
  quite enjoyable as such, without understanding the deeper meaning, but I
  wonder how many children who read the stories as children, might later in
  life suddenly realize the meaning of some of the stories?  For example, in
  "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader", when Eustace was turned back from a drag-
  on to a boy, the episode is an allegory of the salvation experience.

  "The Great Divorce" I also read in college.  I must admit that this and the
  two story series which are better known have been influential in my spirit-
  ual outlook.

  I also read at least two others of his books in college, but I'm not quite
  sure about the titles.  I think they are "Miracles" and "The Problem of
  Pain".

  Addendum to previous response:

  At the conclusion of "The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader'", Aslan (the Lion --
  the Christ figure) told Lucy and Edmund that they were never to return to 
  Narnia again.

       "'You are too old, children,' said Aslan, 'and you must begin to come
     close to your own world now.'
       "'It isn't Narnia, you know,' sobbed Lucy.  'It's _you_.  We shan't meet
     _you_ there.  And how can we live, never meeting you?'
       "'But you shall meet me, dear one,' said Aslan.
       "'Are--are you there, too, Sir?' said Edmund.
       "'I am,' said Aslan.  'But there I have another name.  You must learn to
     know me by that name.  This was the very reason you were brought to Nar-
     nia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.'"

  I think this explains why C. S. Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia.

   Another book by Lewis  is "Surprised by Joy"  which recount his own 
conversion experience.

tlh

Lewis had a lot to say about christianity... However, it's his interpretation
of Plato that has always interested me the most. He is one of the few people
in recent years who has been able to deal reasonalby with the "The Cave".
(Other wise known as the original description of the Separation of Form
and Function "SoFF"...)

		bob wyman

I'm not sure how 'active' this note is now but I must add my piece.

I like everything Lewis wrote (I think I've read them all anyway) and
the Chronicles of Narnia rate as children's classics. Did you know that
"Narnia" was taken from the name of a village in southern Italy?

The book that Lewis himself was most pleased with, however, seems to be
almost unknown. It is called 'Till We Have Faces - a myth retold' and it
is fantastic. If you like Lewis (and who doesn't?) you will not be able
to put this one down for anything. Fortunately it is short enough to read
in a couple of days. I find whenever I read it I do nothing else for the
duration.

So what's it about? It is the story of Cupid and Psyche (the Greek myth that
we get the Beauty & the Beast fairy tale from) told through the eyes of
Psyche's sister. It is set in Bronze age times somewhere north of the Black
Sea in a small barbaric kingdom ruled by an ignorant oaf who happens to
be Orual's (the heroine) father. There are three sisters, the youngest is
Psyche, and if anyone but Lewis was telling this story she would be too good
to be true. The locals decide she IS too good to be true and send her off
to be eaten (or become the bride of) the Brute, a shadowy god that lives on
the mountains. This distresses Orual, who loves her sister dearly, so much
that she goes after her, only to find... well I can't give away too much
of the plot.

In typical Lewis style the characters are profoundly drawn, the type of
people you and I are, just a few differences because they live in a different
time. Orual makes mistakes, and pays dearly for them, but she also has
a great strength of character that she seems almost unaware of herself.
She is very ugly, people keep telling her so, so in defiance of her father
she resolves to wear a veil. She manages to train in swordsmanship and is
surprisingly good at it for a girl, this turns out to be a great advantage
from time to time, especially when her father dies... but then I'm in danger
of giving away too much of the plot again.

If you can get hold of a copy you won't put it down until you've read it.

Roger

> I'm not sure how 'active' this note is now but I must add my piece.

For all practical purposes, every note in this file (or just about any
notesfile) is "active". That's one of the great things about NOTES. All
of the previous activity is still here, so whenever someone new comes
in, he can pick up on older discussions. Feel free to add anything you
like to any note.

--- jerry

    I've just finished entering my review of R. A. MacAvoy, with her
    depiction of the archangel Raphael.  It made me think of the way
    Lewis depicted angels in his Space Trilogy.  They are nothing like
    MacAvoy's Raphael -- they are remote and utterly nonhuman.  I first
    ran into them after some years of reading science fiction.  I remember
    thinking, "Gee, he makes angels sound like the `energy beings' of
    science fiction."  Then I realized it ran the other way around:
    SF "energy beings" are disembodied spirits translated into the SF
    genre, just as "psi" is magic translated into the SF genre.
    
    But the fact remains that Lewis's angels (or "eldila" as they are
    more often called by the extraterrestrials in the books) have rather
    more physics to them than the spirits you encounter in most fantasy.
    In fact, I might venture to say that, depending on your personal
    theology, the "Space Trilogy" might qualify as science fiction,
    not fantasy.  Some people might find his angels plausible, and it
    isn't his fault that science has since blown away his pictures of
    Venus and Mars.  The same thing happened to Niven and Asimov.
    (Although once Lewis said that he thought he knew the canals of
    Mars were an optical illusion even when he wrote the books.  He
    said he wanted to base his story on the Mars of popular imagination,
    not the Mars of astronomy.  That might make his works more fantasy
    than SF in intent.  In any case, he's a nice illustration of how
    fuzzy the boundary line is between the two genres.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

There you go again, mushing Science Fiction and Fantasy together, and magic
and technology!

    Some months back, "Wonderworks" on PBS did a TV serial version of "The
    Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."  Now, they are showing "Prince
    Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader," a sequel to the first
    serial (that is, done by the same people, with the same actors).
    
    Lewis fans may be interested.  It is HIGHLY compressed; they jammed all
    of "Prince Caspian" into a single show.  On the other hand, they are
    very true to the plot.  Only the compression will probably make the
    action seem bewildering to someone who hasn't read the books.
    
    The child actors who play the Pevensie children are pretty good.  They
    special effects that play the Narnian magic are mixed.  For instance,
    all the talking animals are played by humans in very heavy costume; I
    think they might have done better with puppets.  They DO use an
    enormous lion-puppet for Aslan.  It's quite good as long as it stands
    still, but it walks stiffly.  (I wish they had picked a deeper, chestier,
    more resonant voice for Aslan, too, though the one they use is pretty
    good.)
    
    One interesting experiment they tried was a centaur (Glenstorm, for
    those who've read Narnia).  They used image mixing to superpose the top 
    half of an actor over the head of a horse.  As long as the centaur 
    stands still, it works beautifully, but he tends to come apart at 
    the seams when he walks.
    
    Not only have they compressed "Caspian" a great deal, they move
    immediately from "Caspian" to "Dawn Treader," which actually works
    quite well.  They give you the very first opening moments of "Dawn
    Treader," when the children fall through the picture.  The rest of it
    starts up in the second episode.  They have a chubby little slime-bag
    of a Eustace, so that looks promising.  (For those who haven't read the
    Narnia books, Eustace is SUPPOSED to be a slime-bag when first
    introduced.)
    
    Earl Wajenberg