Wheels Within Wheels Wednesday
Sep. 27th, 2017 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
It was supposed to be other things, but I got sidelined by C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. Do you like science fiction, but wish it had more Renaissance cosmology and random sermons about gender? The Space Trilogy isn't really science fiction so much as a very Lewisian fantasy set in space, or, in the case of That Hideous Strength, in which space is mentioned briefly toward the end. Some of the things that happen in the Space Trilogy: a mild-mannered philologist is kidnapped by uncouth public-school scientists who try to sacrifice him to some Martians, but the Martians turn out to be a harmless crew who teach him their language and take him fishing. Later, he meets some angels. The angels send him to Venus, where he has to prevent the local Adam-and-Eve equivalents from screwing it all up again. At first he tries logic and reason, but eventually has to resort to punching the Devil to death. Meanwhile, back on earth, a bunch of diabolical progressives are ruining a sleepy college town! Only one man can stop them, and that man is the resurrected Merlin (who just happens to have been buried in the college deer park).
If you like Lewis, or if you grew up with Lewis and aren't sure how you feel about him now, you should definitely give this a read. I sometimes go back and forth about how much I like Lewis, but these books made me very fond of him, as much because of as in spite of their flaws.
What I'm Reading Now
After I finished Doorways in the Sand, I burned straight through Trumps of Doom, another book by Roger "Razzle Zelazzle" Zelazny, and began but got bogged down in Nine Princes in Amber. Trumps is steeped in the same wisecracking/hard-boiled perpetual confusion as Doorways, whereas in Nine Princes most of the confusion evaporates early on and the story settles into a kind of opaque fantasy battle plot, which I'm having trouble getting into. The two books are linked: Merle, the narrator of Trumps of Doom is the son of Corwin, the narrator of Nine Princes, and both are exiled princes of the perpetually civil-warring fantasy kingdom Amber. Amber is the real world, and Earth and all the other realms are just shadows and mirrors of Amber, which is why Amber initially appears to be made up entirely of fantasy cliches. It's a great premise, but I think like it better as a background curse on hapless concussed pseudo-detectives than I like it as a setting in its own right.
What I Plan to Read Next
Still catching up!
It was supposed to be other things, but I got sidelined by C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. Do you like science fiction, but wish it had more Renaissance cosmology and random sermons about gender? The Space Trilogy isn't really science fiction so much as a very Lewisian fantasy set in space, or, in the case of That Hideous Strength, in which space is mentioned briefly toward the end. Some of the things that happen in the Space Trilogy: a mild-mannered philologist is kidnapped by uncouth public-school scientists who try to sacrifice him to some Martians, but the Martians turn out to be a harmless crew who teach him their language and take him fishing. Later, he meets some angels. The angels send him to Venus, where he has to prevent the local Adam-and-Eve equivalents from screwing it all up again. At first he tries logic and reason, but eventually has to resort to punching the Devil to death. Meanwhile, back on earth, a bunch of diabolical progressives are ruining a sleepy college town! Only one man can stop them, and that man is the resurrected Merlin (who just happens to have been buried in the college deer park).
If you like Lewis, or if you grew up with Lewis and aren't sure how you feel about him now, you should definitely give this a read. I sometimes go back and forth about how much I like Lewis, but these books made me very fond of him, as much because of as in spite of their flaws.
What I'm Reading Now
After I finished Doorways in the Sand, I burned straight through Trumps of Doom, another book by Roger "Razzle Zelazzle" Zelazny, and began but got bogged down in Nine Princes in Amber. Trumps is steeped in the same wisecracking/hard-boiled perpetual confusion as Doorways, whereas in Nine Princes most of the confusion evaporates early on and the story settles into a kind of opaque fantasy battle plot, which I'm having trouble getting into. The two books are linked: Merle, the narrator of Trumps of Doom is the son of Corwin, the narrator of Nine Princes, and both are exiled princes of the perpetually civil-warring fantasy kingdom Amber. Amber is the real world, and Earth and all the other realms are just shadows and mirrors of Amber, which is why Amber initially appears to be made up entirely of fantasy cliches. It's a great premise, but I think like it better as a background curse on hapless concussed pseudo-detectives than I like it as a setting in its own right.
What I Plan to Read Next
Still catching up!
