Line #17 WMG/TheSpaceTrilogy


1	[[foldercontrol]]
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3	[[folder:Character Guesses]]
4	[[WMG:Mark Studdock is the Patient from ''Literature/TheScrewtapeLetters'']]
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6	* Nice try, but the Patient is a bachelor who lives with his mother and Studdock is married. Also, ''Screwtape'' takes place during the Second World War and ''That Hideous Strength'' takes place after the end of the War.
7	* That doesn't present an inconsistency:Patient Studdock got married and moved out after the war.
8	** Uh, the ''Screwtape Letters'' ends with [[spoiler: the patient dying, apparently from a bomb blast]].
9	** Also, the Patient's fiance is ''nothing'' like Jane.
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11	[[WMG:The Tramp whom Merlin encounters is [[Literature/TheLordofTheRings Radagast]] ]]
12	* Only if Radagast started going bad... (Talk of nice beds and servants, vs. the mission of helping Middle-Earth)
13	* Radagast did abandon his mission, so...
14	* Radagast might not have been personally corrupt; he might just have been very committed to method acting the role of a homeless vagrant whose unstable ramblings confuse the already-confused people of N.I.C.E. into foolishness. Or one might imagine him as having become a figure like the Discworld's Lu Tze, whose genuine wisdom, compassion, and courage don't stop him from being pragmatic about the value of the simple things in life like warm undergarments and a chance to catch some sleep.
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16	[[WMG: Jane continued to have clairvoyant visions after the events of the book.]]
17	And she passed them on to C. S. Lewis. (LiteraryAgentHypothesis.) That's how Lewis the narrator can know what various villains were thinking just before they died: it was revealed to Jane in one of her dreams.
18	* Plausible... if Ransom hadn't told her that she would have no more visions.
19	* She may have had just one, immediately after the resolution.
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21	[[WMG: Merlin is wrong.]]
22	Specifically, he's wrong about the baby. Well, maybe Jane is not going to have this one (egg cell going to waste and all that), but nothing prevents her from having another one. So what, you'll ask? The Belbury decidents say she and Mark are "interesting from eugenical point of view" and that Mark has the signs of what they consider greatness about him. They say similar things about some other Christians, which might be [[YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame a bad thing]], but might also mean a great ''potential'' for both good and evil. So, any child of Jane by Mark would have a potential, we may presume, and since stars may influence your temperament and talents (see ''Literature/DiscardedImage''), Christianity has for a long time fought the very determinism that Merlin shows here, the idea that you're forever defined by your horoscope. You decide what to do with your potential '''freely'''.
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24	Now, consider Jane and Mark's marital situation and dispositions at the beginning of the book. Would this be a good home for a prospective saint to grow up? They don't seem all that loving, and they're both definitely quite selfish. So CharacterDevelopment Jane and Mark receive over the book may be, in part, necessary to make them better parents in the future and raise the child they finally have to be a good person, which is important.
25	* Ransom seems to disagree, and the end of the book occurring under the blessing of Venus implies that they will be having the child after all.
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28	[[folder:Continuity]]
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30	[[WMG: ''Out of the Silent Planet'' comes from a different continuity than the other two books]]
31	''Out of the Silent Planet'' contains a [[BasedOnAGreatBigLie "this is real, but all the names have been changed"]] disclaimer at the end. In ''Perelandra,'' Ransom's name truly being Ransom is a plot point.
32	* Well, Ransom is not an uncommon name. The "Arthur" part could have been made up, as well as parts of his background and the area where he lived, while his surname is still Ransom.
33	** ''That Hideous Strength'' has a scene where two N.I.C.E. members are discussing why they can't get a decent philologist to translate their questions for Fake!Merlin- Ransom is brought up by last name only (which might have been enough for Post-war England involving people that, at best, might have a professional relationship only). Maybe 'Ransom' decided, after the events of the first book, decided to officially change his name, and it (coincidentally) lead into the plot of the second book?
34	*** Well, considering that when 'Ransom' (and its meaning) is brought up, no-one claims it's the "speaker"'s ''original'' name (mostly by omission, but still);... It could apply to both parties of the conversation.
35	** Wasn't his first name Elwin, not Arthur?
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37	[[WMG: ''That Hideous Strength'' was started before the events in it were finished]]
38	Thus, talk of a certain college in the present tense.
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40	[[WMG: ''That Hideous Strength'' was written ''long'' after the events of the book.]]
41	Possibly AfterTheEnd, depending on whether it was truly too late for Jane to fulfill a certain prophecy.
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44	[[folder:Cosmology]]
45	[[WMG: Proxima B's Oyarsa spins the planet as well as steering it, in order to prevent tidal locking.]]
46	* Also, because of the sun's flares, the planet has a powerful magnetic field, with aurorae poetically referred to as something along the lines of the Dancing Shield (of Maleldil's protection).
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48	[[WMG:In a blink of cosmic time after the shattering of Sulva, the ring of debris will recoalesce into a new Sulva.]]
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51	[[folder:Coincidental]]
52	[[WMG: Before Merlin was so dramatically "opened up" to be able to channel cosmological power in the third book, Ransom got the honor completely unceremoniously in the second]]
53	* Although Ransom doesn't actually meet [[{{God}} Maleldil]] ''face to face'', the two ''do'' have a mental chat; which starts out like a series of sudden inspirations, goes over a definite feeling of presence into something more like a religious experience, and finally ends in something almost like a telephone conversation (with ultimately even the occasional image thrown in) as the "connection" gradually gets better and better.
54	->Maleldil was not absent. That sense – so very welcome yet never welcomed without the overcoming of a certain resistance – that sense of the Presence which he had once or twice before experienced on Perelandra, returned to him. The darkness was packed quite full. It seemed to press upon his trunk so that he could hardly use his lungs: it seemed to close in on his skull like a crown of intolerable weight so that for a space he could hardly think.
55	* ''Why'' does the connection get so much better over time, until it ends up almost as strong as Tinidril's psychic link to Maleldil? A possible explanation is that during that chat, the latter is slowly and carefully crafting just such a permanent link into ''Ransom's'' mind, too - and the "conversation reception" gets ever better as that new link gets more and more useable.\
56	In which case He is ''very'' gently easing it in as it takes most of a chapter; ''so'' tenderly gradual and intricately careful that it's completely unnoticeable almost to the point of RewatchBonus ("flying under the radar" so as not to hurt or scare Ransom, who's ''already'' quite distressed for different reasons, even further[[note]]Don't forget that the Oyeressu's similar "opening up" in the third book outright kills Merlin eventually - and having the insides of one's self re-arranged even by someone who can most certainly avoid that is [[PrimalFear inherently frightening]] in any case; so it's probably best He didn't elaborate.[[/note]]) - but this ''is'' [[{{Foreshadowing}} the same]] sort of psychological surgery that features as a plot point in the third book as ''the'' big deal of several centuries when it's the Oyeressu who "open up" Merlin. Here, both the story and the narration treat it as: "meh, and another thing".
57	** If there ''is'' such a permanent link, then that of course still quietly exists for the rest of the trilogy.
58	** There's a difference between a conversation and channeling of cosmic powers, so perhaps Ransom was opened just a little - but what about Jane, who has a mystical experience, too?
59	** According to Lewis's beliefs as expounded in his non-fiction works, we are all mentally and spiritually linked to God/Maleldil at all times, deriving our very power of thought and existence from him. That kind of connection between Creator and Creature is completely natural. Merlin, on the other hand, was altered to allow a fellow Creature entry to his soul, something which is far more violent and far less natural.
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61	[[WMG:Ransom's heel wound]]
62	The only way Ransom's heel would have healed up would have been if he'd asked Maleldil Himself to patch him up. Which Ransom didn't - despite the fact that he probably could have had another chat at any time while on Perelandra (Ransom is the one who starts their first chat, remember, asking Maleldil where He is).\
63	And as another book says: "He'd know without asking, but He likes to be asked"...
64	[[/folder]]
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66	[[folder:Other Series]]
67	[[WMG: This takes place in the same universe or multiverse as other books by Lewis]]
68	* Narnia is just another world in this story's universe, that one could hop on a spaceship and travel to.
69	** Narnia occupies a different universe. Though there's nothing to say they could not somehow access the "Wood Between the Worlds".
70	* This is set in the same continuity as ''The Screwtape Letters'', and the demons[=/=]dark eldilla just have different names between books. And if so, did Ransom's dark eldil tempter journey with him to Malacandra and Perelandra?
71	** Semi-{{Jossed}} in that an early draft of the Screwtape Letters' foreword had Lewis receiving the material from Ransom, which was abandoned for the finished book.
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73	[[WMG:Numinor is not [[Literature/TheSilmarillion Númenor]].]]
74	Thulcandra was there since almost the beginning. An originally flat world did not suddenly become a planet as in Second Age 3319.
75	* There's a scene of Ransom talking to Malacandra's Oyarsa, describing what he knows of Earth (Thulcandra); the Oyarsa finds it 'educational'. Presumably he doesn't let slip how much of Earth's history (known to 'Malacandra') Ransom gets ''wrong''.... I'd blame the "bent" Oyarsa of Earth for the misinformation. (e.g. Earth's shape could have changed at the same time the Martian 'high places' were being built.)
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Context WMG / TheSpaceTrilogy