Christian Science Fiction

Some of you may have been reading my blog long enough to know that I am something of a science-fiction fan. I don’t write about it here very much because it doesn’t seem to apply, but, I have started reading C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. I was, until recently, completely unaware that such a series even existed.

To be honest, I don’t think that Lewis’s works are in the same league as, say, Jules Verne (if you’ll pardon the expression). Still, he has come up with some interesting ideas. I finished Out of the Silent Planet the other night, and started reading Perelandra, the second book in the series. By the way, I haven’t been to see the new Star Trek movie yet, but it’s on my list. I read the other day that, in this new movie, Kirk gets the green girl (again), although I have to question the accuracy of that report, if only because it was Pike that got the green girl the first time, but, still, I can’t help but wonder about the timing: I just read where Ransom (Lewis’s intrepid hero) meets up with a green girl on the planet Perelandra. Now I can’t help but wonder if Gene Roddenberry read C. S. Lewis… (somehow I doubt it)

I think the thing that normally draws me to science-fiction is that good science fiction spends a lot of effort trying to make things seem real that, theoretically, could be real, in the future, or somewhere else. A lot of movies today concern themselves with how much adult material they can package into ninety minutes. Star Trek of course, started out as a TV series, and, even on the big screen, seems to embrace big-screen production values while not overstepping the bounds of small-screen morality (as I say this, it occurs to me that there is an old story about NBC worrying about ratings, and encouraging Roddenberry to push the envelope on censorship—which he refused to do, although, admittedly, Federation women traditionally had the shortest skirts of all civilized worlds (until sometime during the airing of the Next Generation, after someone complained that one of the Enterprise’s senior officers looked like an inter-galactic cheerleader). When Star Wars first came out, I really thought that the light sabers were stupid, but I was thrilled at the idea that, although the plot-line was thin, and the acting was less-than-stellar, the story kept moving, and stayed afloat through momentum and special effects, rather than foul language and “adult situations.” Think about it: The original Star Wars had one kiss in it, and later one we find out that kiss was between a brother and his sister, and is still one of the top-grossing pictures of all time.

Not too long ago, I was complaining that it seems like so many movies now are remakes, sequels, or revamped TV shows, and someone asked me if I thought there were any good stories that haven’t already been filmed. I said at the time that I believed that there were, although I couldn’t think of any at the time. Now it occurs to me that I don’t think anything like Lewis’s Space Trilogy has ever been filmed. To be honest, as a live-action film, the technology barely exists to do the story justice, but I am a little surprised that no one has done a animated feature based on the books. The Chronicles of Narnia stories have been done several times, after all. Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that the sales of the Space Trilogy are as impressive as the Chronicles of Narnia (as I said earlier, I only recently heard of the Space Trilogy myself), but still.

UPDATE: I commented yesterday that Gene Roddenberry may have read C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, because both writers included a green lady in their works. I wasn't entirely serious; green skin color is kind of exotic, and it doesn't surprise me at all that the idea could be devloped by two different writers independent of each other. I read further in Perelandra last night, after posting the above, and found Ransom discussing the idea that perhaps God and the Devil were not two seperate forces at work in the universe, but two sides of the same Force. Now I can't help but wonder if George Lucas has read the Space Trilogy.