Saturday 6 June 2020

Space Is Hell

Operation Luna, 30.

After listing vacuum, ultraviolet, X rays, particle radiation and temperature extremes, Steve Matuchek comments:

"For us humans, raw space is hell." (p. 272)

CS Lewis' characters call space "Deep Heaven" and Ransom approvingly quotes Milton's Comus. See here.

 Ransom en route to Mars experiences space as filled with a life-giving radiance whereas Haertel on the same journey knows that cosmic radiation is lethal.
-copied from CS Lewis And James Blish.

Anderson and Blish are hard sf writers whereas Lewis, like Bradbury and Simak, is "soft." Nevertheless, in the rationalized fantasy of Operation Luna:

"The alien demons felt right at home...." (ibid.) in the hell of space.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Yes, I remember the implausible description of space given by Lewis. For such things I prefer the hard SF of writers such as Anderson and Blish. Or, with OPERATION LUNA, hard Scienti Fantasy?

Ad astra! Sean