Sunday, 8 October 2017

Looking Back

CS Lewis addressed the future of mankind (see here) yet looked backwards (here)? Yes. Lewis' answers to present and future problems all came from the past:

Elwin Ransom becomes the Pendragon of Logres, the successor of King Arthur;

Ransom defeats the enemies of freedom not by leading a campaign in and out of Parliament but by cooperating with planetary gods and the revived Merlinus Ambrosius;

he describes the scientific view of a vast, impersonal universe as coming from the Enemy/the Devil.

In his Psychotechnic and Technic future histories, the Wellsian sf writer, Poul Anderson, shows determined human beings using new technologies and resources from elsewhere in the Solar System to overcome the environmental problems of the late twentieth century. Waiting for Merlin and the gods is not an option.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Your fourth paragraph reminded me of how Rudi Mackenzie said the Lady Regent Sandra thought of the universe as an impersonal dance of atoms (I hope I'm recall this correctly). While I would not agree with Lady Sandra that the universe was aimless or pointless, I would not call it diabolic, which is too strong a word to use for that view.

Sean