XPost: alt.usage.english, rec.arts.books, rec.arts.sf.written   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   On Mon, 2 Feb 2026 08:04:14 -0800, John Ames    
   wrote:   
      
   >On Sat, 31 Jan 2026 05:32:45 +0200   
   >Steve Hayes  wrote:   
   >   
   >> Lewis, C.S. 1960. That hideous strength.   
   >> Lewis, C.S. 1952. Out of the silent planet.   
   >> Lewis, C.S. 1953. Voyage to Venus Perelandra.   
   >   
   >"That Hideous Strength" is kind of a mess, but an audacious one. His   
   >other two "Space Trilogy" books are fine indeed, and all three had a   
   >major influence on me as a writer. A fascinating blend of old-school   
   >"planetary romance," theology/mysticism, and social commentary.   
      
   As you can see from my ordering, I like "That Hideous Strength" best.   
   If you take "genre" beyond the publishers and booksellers ones, and   
   divide things into subgenres as some like to do, then it comes closer   
   to the genre of Charles Williams's novels, which I also like, but are   
   definitely fantasy rather than science fiction, and that is the   
   element that predominates in THS.   
      
   Which reminds me, and more in the line of AUE, I had a discussion with   
   someone on exTwitter the other day, in which he said that   
   "predominate" wasn't in the dictionary, or something of that sort --   
   and here I just used it in a sentence. I gather from what he said that   
   "predominate" is used as an adjective in AmE, either instead of or as   
   an alternative to "predominant".   
      
   Back to Lewis, the scene at the end of "Out of the Silent Planet" when   
   Ransom tries to translate Weston's bloviating for the Oyarsa of   
   Malacandra is a magnificent send-up of colonialism, and Devine, as   
   I've already mentioned, was probably based on Cecil Rhodes, a   
   budinessman turned politician, one of whose spiritual descendants is   
   undoubtedly Donald Trump.   
      
   For more on that see here:   
      
      
   or here:   
      
      
      
   --   
   Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa   
   Web:  http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm   
   Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com   
   E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)