In C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, the central character, Elwin Ransom, has adventures spanning the Solar System and learns the original names for astronomical bodies in Old Solar, Hlab Eribol ef Cordi, the original language of the Solar System:
Arbol is the Sun.
The Field of Arbol is the Solar System.
Viritrilbia is Mercury
Perelandra is Venus
Thulcandra is Earth
Sulva is the Moon
Malacandra is Mars
Glund, also called Glundandra, is Jupiter
Lurga is Saturn
In a setting with modern science, Ransom has to be mistaken in his astronomy. We now know that Mars and Venus do not resemble Malacandra and Perelandra.
In the retcon, Arbol is the galactic nucleus, a great globe of stars 27,000 light-years wide and containing the oldest stars and half the mass of the galaxy. The word arbol is Old Solar for a primary, a center of rotation. The Sun is the arbol of the Solar System; the Earth is the arbol of the Moon; an axle is the arbol of a wheel. Ransom did not realize this.
The Field of Arbol is our galaxy, and is spanned by what's called a "brane" in modern cosmology. A brane is a spacetime continuum in any of a variety of sizes and shapes. A brane is not a parallel universe. It is not furnished with analogs to the worlds and people of our universe. Theoretically, branes can come in any size, any number of dimensions between one and about ten, and any geometry – open, closed, cylindrical, toroidal, etc.
Our astronomical universe is a large brane of three spatial dimensions. The brane that spans the Field of Arbol is much smaller. On the inside, the Arbol brane is no more than a few million or billion miles wide. On the outside, it is several hundred thousand light-years wide and connects to many points in our galaxy and its satellites. As a result, you can jump across thousands of light-years of the galaxy by traveling a few million miles, say, in the Arbol brane.
As a result, you can use the Arbol brane to travel quickly from point to point in our galaxy. You enter it at one of the places where it intersects our brane, travel to another intersection, jump out, and find yourself thousands of light-years away after just a few days' or moments' travel.
There are several intersections in our solar system. The one leading through to Malacandra orbits Mars; the one leading to Perelandra orbits Venus.
Of course, you can't move through the intersection into the Arbol brane just by flying into it. There's a technical trick. This trick is well-known to the eldila, the multidimensional energy beings who inhabit deep space and are identical with the angels of theology. (See Eldila.)
It was also known to Weston, the inventor of the spaceship in Out of the Silent Planet; in the book, he discovered the secret of interplanetary flight; in the retcon, he discovered interstellar flight, rather like Richard Seaton in E. E. Smith's Skylark of Space. Of course, Seaton was the hero of his story, while Weston is a villain...
In the retcon, "Malacandra" is the name of a Mars-like planet, but the name also applies to the whole star system containing that planet and to any other systems in the Field of Arbol that that planet's Oyarsa (ruling angel) controls. In fact, ever since the war with the Bent One, Mars is also Malacandrian territory and thus is also "Malacandra" the same way Guam is part of the USA. Likewise, Venus is Perelandrian territory, etc. Each is a beachhead in our star system of one of the powers allied against the Bent One, the evil, fallen Oyarsa of our world.
So, when Ransom et al. go on talking about Mars as equal to Malacandra, it is a natural confusion. Mars is Malacandrian territory. "Politically," it's part of Malacandra.
Q: Why didn't Ransom notice anything while traveling in space? Why didn't he see the ship enter a stargate or make the leap to hyperspace? At least, why didn't he notice the stars change?
It seemed to Ransom that he had never looked out on such a frosty night. Pulsing with brightness as with some unbearable pain or pleasure, clustered in pathless and countless multitudes, dreamlike in clarity, blazing in perfect blackness, the stars seized all his attention, troubled him, excited him, and drew him up to a sitting position.
After a few moments' silence Ransom began again. "Which planet is it
in our terminology?" he asked.
"Once and for all," said Weston, "I am not going to tell you. If you know
how to find out when we get there, you are welcome to do so: I don't
think we have much to fear from your scientific attainments. In the
meantime, there is no reason for you to know."
— Out of the Silent Planet
A: Weston made it quite clear that he did not want Ransom to know where
Malacandra was. It would have been easy for him to make jumps into and
out of the brane when Ransom was asleep or simply not looking out a
window at the moment. Lewis tells us Ransom found the view of the sky
from the spaceship confusing and dazzling; in general, that was because he could
see far more stars than usual, but sometimes, part of the problem may have been
that he was seeing strange new constellations from elsewhere in the galaxy. He may or may not
have ever seen the inside of the Arbol brane; if he did, it looked like normal space, light pouring
through intersection points near stars.
Q: What about Weston's denial that they were leaving the Solar System?
"I suppose all that stuff about infinity and eternity means that you think you are
justified in doing anything – absolutely anything – here and now, on
the off chance that some creatures or other descended from man as we
know him may crawl about a few centuries longer in some part of the
universe."
"Yes – anything whatever," returned the scientist sternly, "and all
educated opinion – for I do not call classics and history and such
trash education – is entirely on my side."
— Out of the Silent Planet
A: Weston said outright that he did not want to tell Ransom where they
were going, and said outright he would do anything whatever to ensure
the success of his project. So it is easy to believe he'd deliberately
confuse the identity of Malacandra.
Q: Doesn't "Arbol" mean "Sun" in Old Solar? Didn't Ransom learn that while learning Old Solar on Malacandra?
A: "Arbol" means "primary," the center around which the rest of a
system orbits. The arbol of our galaxy is the galactic nucleus. The star that
is Malacandra's sun is an arbol, and doubtless the thing the hrossa
pointed to when teaching Ransom the word.
Q: Didn't Ransom see Earth through Augray's telescope?
It directed his attention to something like a small window. Whatever
it was, it did not appear to work like an earthly telescopes Ransom
thought; though an attempt, made next day, to explain the principles
of the telescope to the sorn threw grave doubts on his own ability to
discern the difference. He leaned forward with his elbows on the sill
of the aperture and looked. He saw perfect blackness and, floating in
the centre of it, seemingly an arm's length away, a bright disk about
the size of a half-crown. Most of its surface was featureless, shining
silver; towards the bottom markings appeared, and below them a white
cap, just as he had seen the polar caps in astronomical photographs of
Mars. He wondered for a moment if it was Mars he was looking at; then,
as his eyes took in the markings better, he recognized what they were
– Northern Europe and a piece of North America. They were upside down
with the North Pole at the bottom of the picture and this somehow
shocked him. But it was Earth he was seeing – even, perhaps, England,
though the picture shook a little and his eyes were quickly getting
tired, and he could not be certain that he was not imagining it. It
was all there in that little disk – London, Athens, Jerusalem,
Shakespeare. There everyone had lived and everything had happened; and
there, presumably, his pack was still lying in the porch of an empty
house near Sterk.
— Out of the Silent Planet
A: Ransom saw Earth, yes, on some kind of astronomical instrument. The
instrument was not an optical telescope and did not look like one.
Lewis makes it quite clear that Ransom didn't know how an optical
telescope works, and could not understand Augray's explanation of his
own instrument. We may presume it was really an instrument of
Malacandrian super-science. (And Malacandrian civilization is, after all, five billion years old.)
Q: What about the carvings at Meldilorn? Didn't Ransom see a map of the Solar System, clearly identifying Malacandra as Mars and Thulcandra as Earth?
Many of the pictures he could make nothing of. One that particularly
puzzled him showed at the bottom a segment of a circle, behind and
above which rose three-quarters of a disk divided into concentric
rings. He thought it was a picture of the sun rising behind a hill;
certainly the segment at the bottom was full of Malacandrian scenes –
Oyarsa in Meldilorn, sorns on the mountain edge of the harandra [table-lands], and
many other things both familiar to him and strange. He turned from it
to examine the disk which rose behind it. It was not the sun. The sun
was there, unmistakably, at the centre of the disk: round this the
concentric circles revolved. In the first and smallest of these was
pictured a little ball, on which rode a winged figure something like
Oyarsa, but holding what appeared to be a trumpet. In the next, a
similar ball carried another of the flaming figures. This one, instead
of even the suggested face, had two bulges which after long inspection
he decided were meant to be the udders or breasts of a female mammal.
By this time he was quite sure that he was looking at a picture of the
solar system. The first ball was Mercury, the second Venus – 'And what
an extraordinary coincidence,' thought Ransom, 'that their mythology,
like ours, associates some idea of the female with Venus.' The problem
would have occupied him longer if a natural curiosity had not drawn
his eyes on to the next ball which must represent the Earth. When he
saw it, his whole mind stood still for a moment. The ball was there,
but where the flame-like figure should have been, a deep depression of
irregular shape had been cut as if to erase it. Once, then – but his
speculations faltered and became silent before a series of unknowns.
He looked at the next circle. Here there was no ball. Instead, the
bottom of this circle touched the top of the big segment filled with
Malacandrian scenes, so that Malacandra at this point touched the
solar system and came out of it in perspective towards the spectator.
Now that his mind had grasped the design, he was astonished at the
vividness of it all. He stood back and drew a deep breath preparatory
to tackling some of the mysteries in which he was engulfed.
Malacandra, then, was Mars. The Earth – but at this point a sound of
tapping or hammering, which had been going on for some time without
gaining admission to his consciousness, became too insistent to be
ignored.
— Out of the Silent Planet
A: He thought he did, but it was really a stylized map of the galaxy. The central disc
is not the Sun but the galactic nucleus, a great globe of stars. The partial "concentric rings"
are galactic arms, and they are not really arcs of concentric circles but arcs of logarithmic spirals.
Ransom did not realize this because they were only partial, and because they were drawn as bands of filigree, not as simple lines, the filigree representing the clouds of gas and dust only found in spiral arms. What Ransom took for the orbit of Mercury is the Norma arm, where the Viritrilbia system is.
What he thought was the orbit of Venus is the Centaurus arm, containing the Perelandra system.
The image of Earth, with its erased Oyarsa figure, is in the Sagittarius arm, on the Orion spur, apparently not shown, or not noticed by Ransom, in the stylized map. The apparent orbit of Mars is really the Perseus arm, where Malacandra lies.
Q: Why didn't Oyarsa ever clear up the matter of Mars vs. Malacandra?
"Have you servants out in the heavens?"
"Where else? There is nowhere else."
"But you, Oyarsa, are here on Malacandra, as I am."
"But Malacandra, like all worlds, floats in heaven. And I am not
'here' altogether as you are, Ransom of Thulcandra. Creatures of your
kind must drop out of heaven into a world; for us the worlds are
places in heaven. But do not try to understand this now. It is enough
to know that I and my servants are even now in heaven; they were
around you in the sky-ship no less than they are around you here."
"My people have a law never to speak much of sizes or numbers to you others, not even to sorns. You do not understand, and it makes you do reverence to nothings and pass by what is really great."
— Out of the Silent Planet
A: Lewis makes it quite clear that eldila, including the Oyeresu, are
multidimensional energy beings. They do not have the same concept of
location as we do, and do not even regard planets as particularly
distinct from the "Deep Heaven" they move through. To Oyarsa
Malacandra, "Malacandra" primarily refers to his territory, which
includes the planet Ransom visited and the planet Mars, as well as the
rest of the Malacandra system and other parts of the Field of Arbol.
Add to this the fact that eldila have a general rule of not discussing
technical details with hnau (people who are rational animals) because
it distracts us from the more important spiritual issues, and it
becomes easy to believe Oyarsa would not discuss the issue, if he even
noticed it.
Q: Why did Ransom see Jupiter rising through the asteroids while on Malacandra?
And then I see the night sky. The greater part of it is very like
ours, though the depths are blacker and the stars brighter; but
something that no terrestrial
analogy will enable you fully to picture is happening in the west.
Imagine the Milky Way magnified – the Milky Way seen through our
largest telescope on the clearest night. And then
imagine this, not painted across the zenith, but rising like a
constellation behind the mountain tops – a dazzling necklace of lights
brilliant as planets, slowly heaving itself up till it fills a fifth
of the sky and now leaves a belt of blackness between itself and the
horizon. It is too bright to look at for long, but it is only a
preparation. Something else is coming. There is a glow like moonrise
on the harandra. Ahihra! cries Hyoi, and other baying voices answer
him from the darkness all about us. And now the true king of night is
up, and now he is threading his way through that strange western
galaxy and making its lights dim by comparison with his own. I turn my
eyes away, for the little disk is far brighter than the Moon in her
greatest splendour.
The whole handramit [canal-canyon] is bathed in colourless light; I could count the
stems of the forest on the far side of the lake; I see that my
fingernails are broken and dirty. And now I guess what it is that I
have seen – Jupiter rising beyond the Asteroids and forty million
miles nearer than he has ever been to earthly eyes.
— Out of the Silent Planet
A: He thought it was Jupiter. It was really the star that is the
primary of the Glund system. He certainly did not see it rising through
the asteroid belt of our Solar System, because that is quite invisible
to the naked eye, even when you are in it. What Ransom took for the
asteroid belt was really some other astronomical phenomenon, possibly
an open star cluster.
Q: Why did Filostrato believe there were good and evil Sulvans battling under the surface of the Moon, with forests on the back of the Moon? Why did Merlin believe the same thing?
'But what was the purpose?'
'Hygiene. Why should they have their world all crawling with
organisms? And specially, they would banish one organism. Her surface
is not all as you see. There are still surface-dwellers – savages. One
great dirty patch on the far side of her where there is still water
and air and forests – yes, and germs and death. They are slowly
spreading their hygiene over their whole globe. Disinfecting her. The
savages fight against them. There are frontiers, and fierce wars, in
the caves and galleries down below. But the great race presses on. If
you could see the other side you would see year by year the clean rock –
like this side of the Moon – encroaching; the organic stain, all the
green and blue and mist, growing smaller. Like cleaning tarnished
silver.'
The Stranger mused for a few seconds; then, speaking in a slightly
sing-song voice, as though he repeated on old lesson, he asked, in two
Latin hexameters, the following question:
'Who is called Sulva? What road does she walk? Why is the womb barren
one one side? Where are the cold marriages?'
Ransom replied, 'Sulva is she whom mortals call the Moon. She walks in
the lowest sphere. The rim of the world that was wasted goes through
her. Half of her orb is turned toward us and shares our curse. Her
other half looks to Deep Heaven; happy would be he who could cross
that frontier and see the fields on her further side. On this side,
the womb is barren and the marriages are cold. There dwell an accursed
people, full of pride and lust. There when a young man takes a maiden
in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly
fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish
arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty [delicati] in their dreams
of lust. Their real children they
fabricate by vile arts in a secret place.'
— That Hideous Strength
A: Filostrato and Merlin were largely correct; the Moon, which is
Sulvan territory, has two populations of an alien race, one good, one
evil, battling through the ages. No one has noticed, even after the
Moon landings, because Sulvans are microscopic and live in widely
dispersed underground pockets of life. Filostrato and Merlin probably
did not know that, of course, and when Filostrato spoke of air, water, and forests
on the far side of the Moon, he was giving his own inferences as if they were true;
there is no air, the water is under ground, and any "forests" are underground mats of
something like fungus. And probably neither Filostrato nor Merlin knew that the Sulvans
are not native to the Moon, but colonists.
Q: Why didn't Lord Feverstone (Devine) ever clear the matter up for the N.I.C.E.?
No one at Belbury that night had been cooler than Feverstone. He was
neither an initiate like Wither nor a dupe like Filostrato. He knew
about the Macrobes, but it wasn't the sort of thing he was interested
in. He knew that the Belbury scheme might not work, but he knew that
if it didn't he would get out in time. He had a dozen lines of retreat
kept open.
— That Hideous Strength
A: He may not have known; Weston may have kept him in the dark just as
he did Ransom. Or he may have known and have told the Inner Ring of the
N.I.C.E., but the Inner Ring never got around to telling Mark Studdock.
Q: If Malacandra isn't Mars, etc., why do the characters of the Oyeresu in That Hideous Strength correspond to the astrological characters of Mars and the other planets?
He asked them how they were known to the old poets of Tellus. When and from whom
had the children of Adam learned that Ares was a man of war and that Aphrodite
rose from the sea foam? Earth had been besieged, an enemy occupied territory,
since before history began. The gods have no commerce there. How then do we know
of them? It comes, they told him, a long way round and through many stages.
There is an environment of minds as well as of space. The universe is one – a
spider's web wherein each mind lives along every line, a vast whispering gallery
where (save for the direct action of Maleldil) though no news travels unchanged
yet no secret can be rigorously kept. In the mind of the fallen Archon under
whom our planet groans, the memory of Deep Heaven and the gods with whom he once
consorted is still alive. Nay, in the very matter of our world, the traces of the celestial
commonwealth are not quite lost. Memory passes through the
womb and hovers in the air. The Muse is a real thing. A faint breath, as Virgil
says, reaches even the late generations. Our mythology is based on a solider
reality than we dream: but it is also at an almost infinite distance from that
base. And when they told him this, Ransom at last understood why mythology was
what it was – gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of
filth and imbecility.
— Perelandra
A: Mars is Malacandrian territory, part of "Greater Malacandra" even
though it is not the same as the capital planet Ransom visited. The
knowledge of that association has trickled through, in garbled form,
into western astrology. Mars is the beacon in our skies of the angel
of Malacandra, and the character of that angel is remembered, in
muddled form, in some of our myths. The same is true for the other
planets.
Q: Did Ransom ever figure out that the Field of Arbol wasn't the Solar System?
A: No. At the end of That Hideous Strength, he and all the rest of the
Company of Logres still thought the two were the same thing.
Q: What happened when advances in astronomy and space exploration blew away the idea that Malacandra is Mars and Perelandra is Venus?
A: Modern Logres was thrown into considerable confusion and doubt. There were several interpretations:
Some decided the whole of Ransom's tale was a lie or, at best, a parable for some visionary experience. Something weird clearly happened: look at how Ransom rejuvenated, a fact witnessed by the whole Company of Logres.
Most continued to believe it, but did not know what else to believe. Were the Arbol worlds in a parallel
dimension? Were they the "astral planes" of the mundane planets, related to astronomical Mars and
Venus as Faerie is sometimes supposed to be related to Earth? Were
the modern astronomers being deceived by eldilic illusions, to protect the mortal Malacandrians and
Perelandrians? or by demonic illusions, to discourage humans from stirring up more trouble for Hell
from the planets? Was there a massive coverup of the astronomical
facts? The idea that the Arbol worlds were in other star systems also
came up. It and the parallel dimensions idea are, to this day,
the two main theories about the Arbol worlds.
Q: Wasn't it a bad idea for the Bent One to let Weston and Divine visit Malacandra? Didn't that backfire dreadfully for the powers of evil?
"I will tell you. He has left you this one because a bent hnau can do more evil
than a broken one. He has only bent you; but this Thin One who sits on the
ground he has broken, for he has left him nothing but greed. He is now only a
talking animal and in my world he could do no more evil than an animal. If he
were mine I would unmake his body, for the hnau in it is already dead. But if
you were mine I would try to cure you. Tell me, Thick One, why did you come
here?"
"Me tell you. Make man live all the time."
— Out of the Silent Planet
A: Yes. Perhaps it happened against their will. Weston, at least, was not yet a perfect instrument of evil. He was cruel and bigoted, but he was motivated by an unselfish drive to ensure the long-term survival of humanity (even if it was at the expense of any other intelligent species).
Q: Can an eldil or Oyarsa of the Field of Arbol travel between stars without using the Arbol brane? Can they travel to the Andromeda galaxy, for instance?
A: They can certainly travel between stars and between galaxies if they are willing to take enough time. Whether they have some other way of dodging the light-speed barrier is another question. Very likely; they are multidimensional energy beings, after all.
Q: Where did this very convenient Arbol brane come from?
A: It is a great, ancient eldilic construct.
Q: Did the Bent One ever go outside the Solar System or the Field of Arbol?
"Once we knew the Oyarsa of your world – he was brighter
and greater than I – and then we did not call it Thulcandra. It is the longest of all stories and the
bitterest. He became bent. That was before any life came on your world. Those
were the Bent Years of which we still speak in the heavens, when he was not yet
bound to Thulcandra but free like us. It was in his mind to spoil other worlds
besides his own. He smote your moon with his left hand and with his right he
brought the cold death on my harandra before its time; if by my arm Maleldil had
not opened the handramits and let out the hot springs, my world would have been
unpeopled. We did not leave him so at large for long. There was great war, and
we drove him back out of the heavens and bound him in the air of his own world
as Maleldil taught us. There doubtless he lies to this hour, and we know no more
of that planet: it is silent."
— Out of the Silent Planet
A: He was certainly once free of the whole galaxy, but he has been confined to our
star system, even to our atmosphere, for millions of years, and his followers have been confined
to the orbit of the Moon.
Q: Why is Oyarsa so ignorant of divine history on Earth?
"We think that Maleldil would not give [Earth] up utterly to the Bent One, and there are stories among us that He has taken strange counsel and dared terrible things, wrestling with the Bent One in Thulcandra. But of this we know less than you; it is a thing we desire to look into."
"From what you have told me, I begin to see that there are eldila who go down into your air, into the very stronghold of the Bent One; your world is not so fast shut as was thought in these parts of heaven."
— Out of the Silent Planet
A: That question arises within the canonical Trilogy just as much as in the retconned setting. In fact, it's more acute, since Mars is so much closer than an extrasolar Malacandra. It seems that Heaven maintained "tight security" about the War of Good and Evil on Earth, perhaps to keep this problem spot isolated.
Why such tight security? It was probably necessary to keep demons, dark eldila, from
escaping the siege.
Q: Is it really just Earth that is silent, or the whole Solar System?
He described us as being in a state of siege, as being, in
fact, an enemy-occupied territory, held down by eldils who were at war
both with us and with the eldils of 'Deep Heaven', or 'space'. Like
the bacteria on the microscopic level, so these co-inhabiting pests on
the macroscopic permeate our whole life invisibly and are the real
explanation of that fatal bent which is the main lesson of history. If
all this were true, then, of course, we should welcome the fact that
eldila of a better kind had at last broken the frontier (it is, they
say, at the Moon's orbit) and were beginning to visit us. Always
assuming that Ransom's account was the correct one.
— Perelandra
A: Historically, the siege line was at the orbit of the Moon – or rather the siege
boundary was a spherical surface on which the Moon's orbit cuts a great
circle. The exact boundary runs through the Mare Orientale and the Mare
Marginis. The dark eldila, the "Macrobes," could not move through that
boundary or send or receive through it.
Of course, the Bent One, Oyarsa Thulcandra, used to hold the entire
Solar System and territories beyond. He does so no longer, so his voice
is silent there, but other spirits – notably the special "military
caste" that are the angels we know – work freely there.
Q: What happens to this siege line, now that some humans have secretly visited outside the Solar System and some others have publicly landed on the Moon, not to mention all the interplanetary probes and such?
"The year we are now in – but heavenly years are not as
yours – has long been prophesied as a year of stirrings and high changes and the
siege of Thulcandra may be near its end. Great things are on foot. If Maleldil
does not forbid me, I will not hold aloof from them."
— Out of the Silent Planet
"If you remember, before I left Malacandra the Oyarsa hinted to me that my
going there at all might be the beginning of a whole new phase in the life of
the Solar System – the Field of Arbol. It might mean, he said, that the isolation
of our world, the siege, was beginning to draw to an end."
— Perelandra
A: The seige is breaking down, at least in one direction. Eldila from outside now
sometimes descend. And we know of nothing to rule out visits from hnau, material
people, i.e. more conventional aliens. We don't know if dark eldila can get out, or if they would
even want to. The situation is now fluid.
Q: Why would Heaven lift the siege now?
A: We don't know. From Oyarsa's talk of prophecies, it may be connected with the creation of the Torlindri, the new humanoid race of Perelandra, and their triumph over evil. Perhaps, very soon, dark eldila will not dare to leave Earth, for fear of encountering the Torlindri.
Q: But would the Oyarsas permit travel in spaceships?
"Do you not ask why my people, whose world is old, have not rather come to yours
and taken it long ago."
"Ho! Ho!" said Weston. "You not know how."
"You are wrong," said Oyarsa. "Many thousands of thousand years before this,
when nothing yet lived on your world, the cold death was coming on my harandra.
Then I was in deep trouble, not chiefly for the death of my hnau – Maleldil does
not make them long-livers – but for the things which the lord of your world, who
was not yet bound, put into their minds.
He would have made them as your people are now – wise enough to see the death of
their kind approaching but not wise enough to endure it. Bent counsels would
soon have risen among them. They were well able to have made sky-ships. By me
Maleldil stopped them. Some I cured, some I unbodied–"
"And see what come!" interrupted Weston. "You now very few – shut up in
handramits – soon all die."
"Yes," said Oyarsa, "but one thing we left behind us on the harandra: fear. And
with fear, murder and rebellion. The weakest of my people does not fear death."
— Out of the Silent Planet
A:
Interstellar invasion and conquest is obviously out and maybe even colonization, at least for Malacandrians. But nothing prohibits small-scale visits for exploration and discovery, or on special missions. There are practical difficulties, of course: Malacandrians are used to thin, cold air and low gravity; Perelandrians are used to warmth. But these are mere technical barriers.
1933-1936
Edward Rolles Weston, under infernal inspiration, develops an anachronistic spaceship. Construction is financed by Richard Devine (1937-1938).
1938
Weston and Devine make a short trip to Malacandra.
1940
Weston and Divine kidnap Elwin Ransom to Malacandra. They return nine months later; Ransom takes three months to convalesce. Weston and Devine are similarly exhausted. During his convalescence, Weston falls further under infernal influence; he starts building a second spaceship.
1942
Ransom and Weston go to Perelandra.
1944
Ransom returns from Perelandra.
In the next three years, Ransom inherits St. Anne's on the Hill from his widowed sister in India, on condition that he change his name to her late husband's, "Fisher-King."
1948
Ransom destroys NICE in Edgestow.
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Copyright © Earl Wajenberg, 2010