Out of the Silent Planet on City of Man Podcast

Among the many, many books CS Lewis wrote during his lifetime, the most rewarding and underappreciated may be the Space Trilogy (aka the Ransom Trilogy), three science-fiction novels that together make up some of his earliest and most inventive fiction. Last week I sat down to talk with my friend Coyle Neal of the City of Man Podcast and fellow guest David Grubbs about the first of the three, Out of the Silent Planet. David proved to be a fellow fan; Coyle not so much.

Tune in to hear our discussion, which covers the origins of the novel and its context both in Lewis’s career and in the world at large, the plot and the interesting creatures with which Lewis peopled his martian landscape, and the ideas Lewis grappled with in the persons of his three human characters and their conflicting approaches to understanding Mars. Along the way we talk about the inspirations for the story and its world including Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom series and HG Wells’s The First Men in the Moon, and how Lewis’s early fiction stacks up against that of GK Chesterton and JRR Tolkien.

We had a great time recording this episode and I hope y’all both enjoy the listen and find the discussion fruitful. We aim to continue Lewis’s trilogy with a discussion of Perelandra soon. In the meantime, You can listen to City of Man Podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, and other fine podcasting apps, or to this particular episode via the embedded Stitcher player in this post. You can look at the shownotes at the Christian Humanist Radio Network website here.