Hello and welcome to this episode of Chronicles where today we're going to be talking all about out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis.

This is actually the first time that we've spoken about C.S. Lewis dedicated an episode to one of his stories on Chronicles.

And so I wanted to bring in a heavyweight C.S. Lewis enthusiast, Nick. Thank you.

Yeah, and not my actual weight. He means, of course, my C Lewis knowledge. Intellectual heavy weights. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, great to be here. And in a way, I wouldn't say I'm a heavyweight, but I do have some expertise on literature because I do have an MA in modern literature, although Lewis would hate modern literature. But I know Carl's quite big on having degrees and stuff. So I do actually have a little bit of expertise. And then I'm the world's biggest CS Lewis fan. Right.

So that helps as

well. And I think it's really great to talk about this trilogy because Lotus Eater's fans will

love at least the third one, that hideous trend, which is an incredibly prophetic book about

our modern political situation. And I've even seen tweets recently saying, you're not

living in 1984, you're not living in a brave new world, you're living in that hideous strength.

So when we get to that one, people will resonate with it. But we want to be thorough, so we have

to start. We do. We like to do things properly here. So we've got to do the whole trilogy. And

they are also all great in their own right. They are. They are. I really enjoyed out of the silent planet. It was a slow burn. You know, it was a really slow build.

And I suppose as well, because of the nature of the main character, Elwyn Ransom, and you know, you get into his mind, you share

his anxieties about his situation and where all of this is going. You know, you also fall into

having those anxieties as well. And so you're as surprised as he is when things don't really

turn out to be as he thinks are going to.

But before we get ahead of ourselves on all of that,

let's start by talking a little bit about Lewis himself,

because obviously he was a lot like many of his writing heroes

and the people that had impressed him, you know,

who were a generation or two before him.

For example, he name-checked H.G. Wells a few times in this novel.

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