Poul Anderson does not have a specific message - except that human freedom, dynamism and diversity are good things and certainly preferable to their opposites. Anderson's more specific views can be discerned in his texts - Manse Everard at one point asks a colleague if she is some kind of liberal - but he does not preach these views and gives sympathetic treatment to characters that he clearly disagrees with.
CS Lewis preached but also entertained. The popularity of Narnia is testament to that. I read these books to my daughter who later read them herself and understood them more deeply. My granddaughter's grasp of theology was: "The Witch killed the Lion and the Lion came alive again and the Lion killed the Witch and the Witch didn't come alive again!"
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I had to laugh a bit at your grand daughter's commentary on Lewis' Narnia books! Alas, I only came to the Narnia books when already adult, and I fear they did not "grab" me as they might have done if I had come across them as a boy. My loss, I know!
Fortunately, I did come to read Tolkien and Anderson as a boy, and they did grab me!
Sean
Sean,
In my teens, I read everything that I could find by Lewis, including Narnia, just as I read Heinlein and Blish without differentiating juvenile from adult works.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Good! I'm glad you had a greater appreciation for Lewis' Narnia books than I do. And Heinlein's so called juveniles are far better than his awful (NOT awe inspiring!) later books.
Sean
Post a Comment