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Title: From Narnia to a Space Odyssey : The War of Letters Between Arthur C. Clarke and C.S. Leiws by Arthur C. Clarke, C.S. Lewis ISBN: 0-7434-7518-6 Publisher: I Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.33 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Author's Response
Comment: To all concerned,
The intention of the book was to document, if possible, the dialogue which took place between Arthur C. Clarke and C.S. Lewis, both of which produced a profuse amount of writing. Clarke took offense to C.S. Lewis's Perelandra and started a dialogue with him. The dialogue took not only the form of letters they sent to each other, but also essays and stories they wrote as well. Their choice of subject matter is very revealing. The book is open ended and attempts to pull the reader into a dialogue that has not finished. That there were only a few letters that passed between them is disappointing, but it does not diminish the fact that they had an impact on eachother.
In his first letter to Lewis, Clarke argued that Lewis did not know Astronomers well enough to write about them. A few years later, Lewis in the introduction to his final installment of That Hideous Strength, admits that he only knew enough about his profession to write about it. Clarke's anger at Lewis seems to have impacted Lewis's writing. Clarke also never convinced Lewis that Space Explorers could be trusted, and one can see his attempts to do so in other writing. This is a piece of the puzzle in Lewis's life that is not discussed in major biographical works about Lewis by Walter Hooper and Humphrey Carpenter.
The work should be appealing to those who are interested in the impact these giant literary figures had on eachother, for those who would like some insights into the motivation of the writers, and for those who haven't memorized everything that has been written about the authors. The work is of interest to academics, documentarians, and fans of either or both. It contains not only letters, but also profiles, stories and essays. The work cannot be fully comprehensive because the dialogue was disparate and is still not complete. The book is an addition to the scholarship that already exists about the two authors.
As for the typos, sorry, but debris is not an exact match for some of the waste that we have introduced into the sattelite belt. To err is human....
Rating: 2
Summary: So Few Letters, So Much Time
Comment: Readers of Lewis would be happy for any book with unpublished CSL letters to see print. After waiting for four years to see this come to publication, as a Lewis scholar, I confess that I am quite dismayed at how actually few are the number of letters available. This is not the editor's fault; but the promotional material--maybe: for it promises a "war" and what we find is really a polite, brief skirmish ended by a formal demurral on Lewis's part--who seems unusually reticent for someone well known for public debate on literary and ethical topics of the kind that Clarke initiates here. Further, only wishful thinking makes it possible to draw the conclusion that "Clarke brought Lewis back to earth," or that there is any specific connection between Narnia and Space Odyssey, as the book's self-description and/or subtitle would imply. One completes the reading knowing only that Lewis and Clarke were congenial and wary; if only there had been a real debate about religion and science, world conquest and quarantined humanity (!)
I agree with John Sherwood's earlier review above that there are a surprising number of typos in this work--quite distracting. One must appreciate the effort it took to bring the project forward, but I think, in order to appreciate Lewis further, one must turn to David Downing's PLANETS IN PERIL and Doris Myers' C S LEWIS IN CONTEXT, for a more thoroughgoing discussion of Lewis's sci-fi milieu.
Rating: 3
Summary: Worth having -- despite missed opportunities
Comment: As the overseer of a fan site devoted to Arthur C. Clarke, at Mysteryvisits, I'm pleased these letters were made available in a published volume, along with commentary of any kind. The editor, Ryder W. Miller, is to be commended for his efforts. It appears that he rescued a failed project and managed to turn it around so it could be completed. For that, we Clarke fans are grateful.
The book has the full support of Sir Arthur, who provides both an introduction and an emailed afterword. Of course, nothing much related to Clarke gets published without his full support, it seems.
The book's physical appearance is an improvement over the recent publication of letters exchanged between Clarke and Lord Dunsany. The new book is a handsome-looking hardback with a nicely printed jacket. And the commentary by Ryder is welcome and occasionally insightful, with reservations mentioned below. The most intriguing of Miller's contentions is that Lewis altered the tone of his "space trilogy" because of Clarke, admitting that he knew little about the science of space travel or its proponents, and rendering the third novel ("That Hideous Strength") entirely earthbound.
Those are the compliments. The drawbacks are fairly apparent, too. For one thing, the premise is slim, in that the correspondence consisted of just 15 letters, many of those from Lewis being brief and obscure. The bones of contention between the two writers were big in concept but limited in exploration. Ultimately, the letters hardly amount to a "war" -- in fact, the letters are uniformly polite, restrained and full of mutual admiration.
There are other drawbacks. The transliterations of Lewis' letters are pretty sad. Lewis often wrote illegibly, and Miller seems to prefer to leave the "translations" illegible, too, rather than take a stab at what words Lewis may have been attempting. As a result, the impression is that Lewis often wrote in gibberish, which one has every reason to know is far from the truth.
And the typos!! Miller's own introduction contains several -- including 'debree' for 'debris' -- and some strained syntax. It appears that, as editor, Miller needed an editor as well.
To flesh out the book, selections of fiction by Clarke and Lewis from the general period of the correspondence (excepting "A Meeting with Medusa," which isn't) are included to form the second part of the book. This might be handy for those who don't own much of the writings of either, but one wonders how many such people would purchase this particular book. Miller suggests this was done to give the reader an idea of the creative thinking of the two men at the time of their correspondence -- and yet some analysis might have been intriguing. Instead, there is none. It's a nice idea left unfulfilled.
Because Lewis gets short shrift from the book in general, and doesn't draw any supportive data from the extensive Lewis academic literature that exists, I imagine the book will end up being of more interest to Clarke fans than to Lewis' admirers. And many of us Clarke "nuts" already were aware of these contacts, including the various Clarke quips about them that occur in his other writings. Thus Clarke's intriguing contact with Lewis probably will remain little-known among Lewis' many admirers. Ah, well! I hope I'm wrong.
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Title: Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship by Colin Duriez ISBN: 1587680262 Publisher: Hidden Spring Pub. Date: November, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason by Victor Reppert ISBN: 0830827323 Publisher: Intervarsity Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Lewis Agonistes: How C.S. Lewis Can Train Us to Wrestle With the Modern and Postmodern World by Louis Markos ISBN: 0805427783 Publisher: Broadman & Holman Publishers Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.99 |
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Title: C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church by Joseph Pearce ISBN: 0898709792 Publisher: Ignatius Press Pub. Date: December, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Inklings Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to the Lives, Thought and Writings of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield and Their Friends by Colin Duriez, David Porter ISBN: 082721622X Publisher: Chalice Press Pub. Date: September, 2001 List Price(USD): $32.99 |
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