Saturday, May 31, 2014

Spicy Suspense in Space!





In the futuristic world of 1935, Charles Lindbergh and Robert Goddard were the first men on the Moon; rockets are almost as common as dirigibles, and plucky girl reporter Ginger DuPree is given an assignment to do a story on a planned expedition to Mars.  But she discovers a sinister menace behind the mysterious accidents occurring at the Goddard Space Station, which eventually lead her to face the Cat-Men From Mars!



HANNIBAL TESLA ADVENTURE MAGAZINE is a pulp era adventure comic I've been drawing on my website for a while now.  The title character is a globe-trotting two-fisted scientist in the Doc Savage mold with a team of able assistants.  The current storyline features one of these, Ginger, and tells of her adventures before she met Hannibal, trying to thwart a Martian invasion.


Her adventures take her from the orbital space station where the Mars rocket is being built, to the surface of the Moon where she encounters the secrets of the Ancient Lunarians, to the Red Planet Mars itself where she must survive the intrigues of the Martian Imperial Court.



Can Ginger stop the Martian invasion?  What secret lies behind the ancient war between the Lunarians and the Old Ones of Mars?  And will Ginger ever finish her story?

For the answer to these and other gripping questions, tune into HANNIBAL TESLA ADVENTURE MAGAZINE at kurtoonsonline.com




Thursday, May 29, 2014

Three Hearts and Three Lions part 2: Quest for Cortana

Ever since he arrived in this strange magical world, Holger Carlsen, a practical-minded Danish engineer with perhaps a spark of adventure in him, has been mistaken for a legendary knight. The Faerie lord who has been trying to capture or kill him certainly believes he is someone significant; and the sorceress Morgan le Fay, allied with Faerie against the human realms, seems to have a history with him as well. And Holger is having strange stirrings of memory. Can it be that he truly has lived two lives? Who really is the Knight who bears the shield of the Three Hearts and the Three Lions?

Holger has gained two allies in the form of Hugi, an opinionated dwarf with an accent thick enough to make Peter Jackson blanch, and Alainora, a sweet young thing raised in the wild by some of the more benevolent creatures of magic and who has an enchanted garment that permits her to change into a swan. Together the three have been putting distance between themselves and the twilight curtain marking the boundary between the human-held lands of the Christian Empire and the surrounding Middle World, ruled by the forces of Chaos.

So far they have been traveling through wilderness, living off the hospitality of what peasant cottages they encounter and occasional gifts of prey offered by Alainora’s Woodland Friends. Now they have finally come to a town, where dwells a wizard whom Alainora hopes may be able to help Holger’s plight.

Martinus Trismegistus is a licensed practitioner, thank you very much, and in addition to practicing magic, serves as the town dentist, apothecary, scribe and horse doctor. After listening to Holger’s story, he hazards a guess as to the identity the Knight of the Hearts and Lions.
“Quite likely he was one of the Chosen, like [Charlemagne] or Arthur or their greatest paladins. I do not mean a saint, but a warrior whom God gave more than common gifts and then put under a more than common burden. The knights of the Round Table and of Carl’s court are long dead, but another champion may have taken their place. So before Chaos could hope to advance, this man had to be gotten out of the way.”
He goes on to speculate that the Forces of Chaos, perhaps Morgan herself, had attempted to do this by capturing this knight and exiling him to another world, perhaps taking his memories and changing him into a baby to hinder his return. This does fit with Holger’s remembered history. He was a foundling infant and never knew his true parents

But despite Morgan’s best efforts, this champion did return. Martinus doubts that there was any divine intervention involved; the way he describes it almost sounds like an electron returning to its appropriate energy state. “At the moment of greatest need, the champion had to return.”

Holger doesn’t particularly like the idea that he is being controlled by Destiny. But it’s not really Destiny that is his problem. The easiest thing for him to do would be to find a safe, secluded bolt hole and set up a little love nest with Alainora and let the whole war between Order and Chaos be someone else’s problem. But he couldn't in good conscience do that, any more than he could stay safe in America when the Nazis invaded his native Denmark. As Martinus said, along with the greater gifts of the Paladin, he has also been given a greater burden: a Paladin’s sense of honor and of obligation.

Martinus does have a suggestion. Holger has heard mention of a sword named Cortana, which the wizard recognizes. It is an exceptional sword, made of the same steel as Charlemagne’s sword Joyeuse, or King Arthur’s Excalibur. It bears the blessings of a holy saint and in the hands of its rightful owner would be a mighty bulwark for Christendom. This sword – if he could find it -- would undoubtedly protect Holger from his Faerie foes.

Another problem comes up. Holger has heard that a Saracen knight has been seen in the region seeking the Knight of the Three Hearts and Lions; he now discovers that the mysterious Moor is in this very town. At Holger’s urging, Martinus places a spell of disguise on him, and he adopts the nom de guerre “Sir Rupert of Graustark” after a fictional country from Ruritanian novels.

The Saracen is staying at the local inn and introduces himself as Carahue, once king of Mauretania. He seems to be a friendly, agreeable sort. He assures Holger that he too is a Christian.
“Once, true, I fought for the paynim, but the gentle and virtuous knight who overcame me also won me to the True Faith. Though even were I still a follower of Mahound, I would not be so discourteous as not to drink to your most beautiful lady’s health.”
He goes on to say that he seeks a man he once knew long, long ago. The man had vanished into realms unknown. In his searching for the man, Carahue had been cast ashore on the magical isle of Hy Braseal, where time flows strangely, as it does in Avalon or under Elf Hill. By the time Carahune was able to find a means to escape the isle, (and extract himself from the faerie damsel who had taken a liking to him), many centuries had passed. He heard that the man he sought would soon also be drawn back to the mortal world and so has been searching for him.

As wacky as this story sounds, Holger finds it believable. The Faerie he first encountered tried to trick him into spending a night under Elf Hill, so he’s had a bit of experience with variable time rates. This world follows the medieval romances of King Charlemagne and his knights, and by the standards of those, Carahue’s adventures seem pretty typical. But Holger’s not sure he can trust the affable African. He won’t say why he wants to find his missing knight; and as Holger muses, the fact that Carahue speaks well of the knight means little. Under the fantastic code of chivalry, men could sing each other’s praises while carving out each other’s livers.

But a word first about religion. The Empire in which Holger finds himself, which lies under siege by the Middle World, is a Christian one; but the world is definitely not Narnia.

The author, Poul Anderson, is not an apologist out to proselytize with his stories as C.S. Lewis does – I rather get the impression that, like Holger, Anderson is an agnostic with a Lutheran background – but neither is he particularly hostile to religion, as many of his contemporaries from the John W. Campbell school of science fiction were.

The first Anderson novel I ever read was The High Crusade, in which a group of medieval knights encounter an alien invasion’s advance scout ship and seize it to use in fighting the French. The narrator is a pious monk named Brother Parvus. Another writer might have portrayed a religious figure as either a cynical mountebank or a fool, but Anderson doesn’t do that. Although he frequently makes fun of Parvus’s medieval misconceptions about science, he never mocks the monk’s faith or questions his sincerity.

In Three Hearts and Three Lions, Anderson treats aspects of religion as integral parts of how the Laws of Nature work in this world. The Faerie are repelled by holiness, and certain types of ethically-dubious magic are dispelled by it. But Anderson does not set up a dualism where Christianity is Good and all other religions are Evil; his paradigm here is a conflict between Order and Chaos. Christianity happens to be the predominant faith in this region which lines up on the Lawful end of the struggle, but Islam is one too. And although Carahue is a Christian convert, his former religion is not portrayed as something Evil. (And although he may be a convert, old habits die hard; Anderson has a running gag in which Carahue will occasionally say something like “By the hand of the Prophet!” and then quickly correct himself to add “…the Prophet Jesus.”)

For that matter, Carahue observes that the heathen barbarian tribes to the north, where the sword of Cortana is to be found, were not always unlawful. They have since been corrupted by Chaos and now practice cannibalism and human sacrifice, but in Carahue’s day they were merely uncivilized, not evil.

Anderson’s Operation Chaos plays with this a bit more explicitly. The protagonists, a witch and her werewolf husband, harrow Hell in order to recover their stolen child. Heaven cannot directly aid them, other than to supply a little technical advice; so at the climax, Ginny calls upon those Powers in the world who served neither Heaven nor Hell but who in their own way fought against entropy. Much as he loved the ancient gods of the Greeks and the North, I doubt that C.S. Lewis would have been comfortable doing that.

Back to the story. Carahue offers to join “Sir Rupert’” quest to seek the sword Cortana. It may be, after all, that he will find the one he seeks in this quest. Does he suspect Holger’s true identity? If he does, he says nothing. Holger is unsure whether to let Carahue accompany them; but he really has no good reason to forbid it. And the generous Moor has been good enough to cover the groups food and lodging expenses – something Holger had worried about because he has no cash -- so it would be churlish to spurn his aid. For the time being, though, Holger still harbors suspicions about Carahue and hesitates about revealing his true name

In the character of Carahue, Anderson might be seen as anticipating the cliché of the Black Buddy/Sidekick, similar to the role of Azeem in the movie Robin Hood Prince of Thieves; but really, the medieval romances invented the cliché first. Although the Victorian bowdlerizers tended to whitewash them out of King Arthur’s Round Table, there were heroic black knights in the medieval tales. Years after I first discovered Three Hearts and Three Lions, I read Bullfinch’s Mythology and found Carahue the King of Mauretania mentioned, along with Holger, under the name by which he was known at Charlemagne’s court.

Holger’s relationship with Alainora is becoming more complicated. She’s young, affectionate, and has the distracting habit of going about naked except for her enchanted swan-may garment which more resembles a very skimpy poncho than a gown. But she is so sweet that Holger doesn’t feel comfortable reciprocating her affection; especially since his goal is to leave this world and return home to Denmark. He’s been keeping her at arm’s length, and this has been making her unhappy.

But now Carahue has joined the party and he is far from blind to her charms. He is courteous enough to ask Holger if Alainora is his leman, or lover, before he starts flirting with her; but once he's certain that the way is clear, he sets out to focus his not-inconsiderable charm on her. Yes, Holger has no one to blame but himself for his situation, but he’s still not happy about it.

Stewing in jealousy and self-pity, Holger is vulnerable to another Faerie attack. A nixie grabs him and drags him down to her underwater boudoir. Again, Holger uses scientific knowledge, and a bit of luck to escape.

Intelligence from Marius’s spirit familiars has told them that Cortana is hidden in an old shrine that had been overrun and desecrated by human allies of Chaos. The sword’s sanctity is such that the Faeries cannot touch it, but Morgan used human minions to steal it and hide it in the chapel Approaching the shrine, Alainora reports that a huge army of barbarian fighters have gathered around it. Chaos is massing its armies for a huge push against Christendom.

Holger also again meets Morgan le Fay, who offers to restore his memories if he will abandon his quest and come with her. By this time, Holger has come to realize that he is a man of two worlds, and that this world is his original home. The previous time he encountered Morgan, she very nearly succeeded in seducing him. This time, it’s not even close.

The party finds an underground tunnel which can bring them to the shrine without having to fight their way through the army; but it takes them directly into a troll’s lair. The depiction of the fearsome creature which regenerates after every sword-stroke and which can only be destroyed by fire became the basis for the archetypical Troll from Dungeons & Dragons.

Finally they reach the chapel and find the holy sword. As he grasps it, Holger’s memories return. He turns to Alainora. “Whatever comes… whatever happens to me, know that you will return safe, and that you will always bear my love.”

Carahue recognizes and names him. “I sought you, comrade… I sought you, Ogier.”
Holger Danske whom the old French chronicles know as Ogier le Danois mounted into the saddle. And this was the prince of Denmark who in his cradle was given strength and luck and love by such of Faerie as wish men well. He it was who came to serve Carl the Great and rose to be among the finest of his knights, the defender of Christendie and mankind. He it was who smote Carahue of Mauretania in battle, and became his friend, and wandered far with him. He it was whom Morgan le Fay held dear; and when he grew old, she bore him to Avalon and gave him back his youth. There he dwelt until the paynim again menaced France, a hundred years later, and thence he sallied forth to conquer them anew. Then in the hour of his triumph he was carried away from mortal men.
Now in the hour of need he has come again, and wielding the holy sword Cortana, with Carahue at his side, he charges into the armies of Chaos.

And what then?

In an epilogue, the narrator describes meeting Holger some years after the war and how Holger told him the whole story. “And how did you get back?” he asks, when Holger gets to about that point.

“Suddenly I was back,” Holger says. One moment he was riding forth scattering the forces of Chaos before him; the next he was back on the Danish beach in the middle of the firefight between his Resistance group and the Germans. Stark naked and full of adrenaline, he charged the Germans like one of his berserker ancestors, grabbed a machine gun and finished them.
He grimaced at an unpleasant recollection, but said doggedly, “Those two worlds – and many more, for all I know – are in some way the same. The same fight was being waged, here the Nazis and there the Middle World; but in both places, Chaos against Law, something old and wild and blind at war with man and the works of man. In both worlds it was the time of need for Denmark and France. So Ogier came forth in both of them, as he must.”
He had accomplished his task in the world of Charlemagne; but he was still needed in our world. Like the inexorable logic of a physics equation, he was brought back.

But now he knows where he belongs. He has come back to America to haunt old book stores for grimoires and treatises on magic. With luck, he hopes to find a way back

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Three Hearts and Three Lions part 1: Into the Faerie Realm

Poul Anderson is perhaps not one of the legendary titans of science fiction, but he has long been a favorite of mine. A writer with a background in physics, he came from the John W. Campbell school of Hard Science Fiction, but he also had a strong interest in the Middle Ages and was one of the founding members of the Society for Creative Anachronism. He is perhaps best-known for his Hoka stories, written with Gordon Dickson, but he wrote a wide range of tales from space opera to time travel to historical fiction to fantasy. He was one of the core contributors to Robert Aspirin’s Thieves’ World anthologies and his essay “On Thud and Blunder” is a must-read for writers of heroic fantasy.

Three Hearts and Three Lions is an earlier work of his which displays both his love of the medieval period and his background in physics, approaching magic from a hard science point of view.

Holger Carlsen must have had some spark of heroism in him, otherwise why would he feel compelled to leave a good engineering job in America to return home to Denmark when the Nazis invaded, and go on to join the Resistance? Holger himself didn't know. It was something he felt he needed to do.
It was on a mission with the Danish Resistance, helping to smuggle an important person out of the country, that his team was surprised by a German ambush on the beach. Struck by a bullet, Holger loses consciousness.

Then things get weird.

He awakens, naked, in a forest, the kind of densely-wooded forest that hasn’t existed in Denmark in centuries. He finds a large war-horse tethered to a tree, along with clothes and armor which fit him perfectly -- all the stranger because Holger is not a small man -- and a shield bearing the device of three hearts alternating with three lions.

At first he wonders if his friends have carried him off to another country; then he wonders if he’s in another time. Finally he comes to the realization that he is in another world.

In this world, the legends of Charlemagne and his knights, like the Song of Roland, are historical. This seems to work both ways; one character Holger meets muses that their legends of Frederick Barbarossa and the Emperor Napoleon’s champions might be similar echoes from our world. This world is locked in a millennia's-old conflict between the forces of Order, represented mostly by Christendom, and of Chaos, represented by the Faerie of the Middle World.

If that theme of Order vs. Chaos sounds familiar, it might be because you've played Dungeons & Dragons. Gary Gygax and Dave Arnesson borrowed a number of elements from Three Hearts and Three Lions, including the Paladin character class, based largely on Holger, the depiction of the Classic D&D Troll, and most importantly, the Alignment System based on Order vs. Chaos.

Holger muses that the situation here is analogous to the one he left in Europe with two diametrically-opposed world-views facing off against each other; (or the one existing at the time Anderson wrote the book, when the Iron Curtain had descended across Europe).

Since the 1960s I think we've gotten used to identifying “Order” with totalitarianism and “Chaos” with freedom, but Anderson has a science background. He associates Chaos with Entropy and the Heat Death of the Universe. The theme of heroes fighting against Chaos and Entropy comes up in more than one of his stories. In addition, Anderson was a Kipling fan, and I suspect was thinking of the line from the poem “Recessional” which speaks of the “lesser breeds without the law” – not primitive, uncivilized tribes, but nations like the Prussians of Kipling's day and the Nazis a generation later, governed by Might rather than by moral codes.

Although in the Carolingian world of Three Hearts, Christendom, as represented by the remnants of Charlemagne’s Empire, stands as the champions of Order, we are told that the Mohammedans are also of Lawful Alignment, and it’s strongly suggested that the wars between Christians and Muslims are greatly to blame for the weakening of Order and a big reason why the Faerie realms of the Middle World have been encroaching in the past millennium.

Holger seems to be an important person in this world, although at first he thinks he’s being mistaken for somebody else. The name Holger seems to be a famous one, and he hears rumors that a Moorish knight has been seen in the area asking after a knight bearing the three hearts and the three lions.

On the questionable advice of a suspiciously-friendly witch, Holger seeks counsel from a Faerie lord, but this proves to be a mistake. The Faeries try first to kill him outright; then to capture him through trickery. The fairy lord summons Morgan le Fay, the powerful sorceress, who seems to have a history with Holger. She tries to seduce him and comes close to succeeding.

Fortunately, Holger is not alone in his quest. He has gained the friendship of Hugi the dwarf; a race allied with neither human nor Faerie, who has an accent even thicker than Peter Jackson’s dwarves; and of Alianora, a human girl raised in the wild by some of the more friendly of the magical creatures, who has the ability to transform herself into a swan. Alianora is an affectionate girl, and Holger finds himself attracted to her, but he doesn't want to take advantage of her, especially since he chiefly wants to get home, and so he keeps her at arm’s length.

Through their various encounters with magical creatures, Holger uses his engineering experience and his scientific background to good advantage. When challenged by a giant to a riddle contest, he manages to stall the brute until dawn when daylight would turn him into stone. Holger is able to identify the smell of ozone in the air and realizes just in time that such a huge mass of carbon transmuted into silicon would result in an unstable isotope, and he quickly leads his friends away before the radiation from the giant’s stone form can harm them.

In another chapter, he comes to a village being troubled by a werewolf. The wolf is trailed to the home of a local lord. Holger uses deduction, process of elimination, and a knowledge of germ theory to identify which member of the knight’s household is the true werewolf, and then arrives at a humane solution to deal with the threat.

Holger is more and more certain that he is someone significant here; and he has nagging echoes of memories about things. Who is the Knight of the Three Hearts and the Three Lions?


NEXT: Advice from a Wizard; the Mysterious Moor; the Quest for Cortana and the Knight’s Identity Revealed!

Thursday, May 15, 2014

C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy: That Hideous Strength (conclusion)

“If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family – anything you like – at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point where there was more elbow room and contrasts weren't quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder. Like the poem about Heaven and Hell eating into merry Middle Earth from opposite sides…”
It probably seemed that way to C.S. Lewis, writing in the latter days of World War II. I think here he succumbs to the same mistake he finds in Modernists, that they see all history as a seamless progression from point A to and anticipated point B.

But whether Dr. Dimble is mistaken or not, Mark and Jane Studdock have found themselves on opposite sides of a cosmic war and there is little neutral ground to stand on. The age-old conflict between Good and Evil is about to enter a startling new phase.

We are not told how Mr. Bultitude first came to St. Anne’s. He seems to have just shown up one day. Very likely, MacPhee’s guess that he was a trained bear who wandered away from a carnival is correct; but if Mr. Bultitude was ever a wild animal, the peaceful environment of St. Anne’s has tamed him. The manor is like a second Eden, where man and animals co-exist in harmony, and even the mice are welcome to eat the crumbs which fall from the Master’s table. This is largely due to Ransom’s influence. The Director’s brief sojourn on the unfallen world of Perelandra has given him the rapport with animals which is Adam’s neglected birthright.

Mr. Bultitude is largely contend to live in the garden, occasionally wandering into the manor house to startle unwary guests, like Jane, or to sit by the fireside and receive affectionate scratches from Ransom. He is vaguely aware that he is not supposed to stray from the garden, but being a bear of little brain, his thought processes get a bit fuzzy. When he finds the garden gate accidentally left unlatched, his curiosity gets the better of him. This passage, told from the bear’s point of view, is one of my favorites in the book.

A couple of workers from the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments happen to drive by. They have been assigned to acquire animals for the N.I.C.E. laboratories and are a bit behind quota. Coming across a stray bear wandering loose is quite a stroke of luck for them – one might almost say a Godsend – and they easily lure Mr. Bultitude into their truck.

What they don’t realize is that Mr. Bultitude is not your average bear. Merlin has identified him as one of the Seven Bears of Logres, and in one of the strange oracular moments that seem to strike him occasionally has prophesied “…that before Christmas this bear would do the best deed that any bear had done in Britain except for other bear that none of us had ever heard of.”

The Director has asked Jane and some of the other women to put the Lodge, a small cottage on the manor grounds, in order. Household chores at St.Anne’s are done on a rotating basis; the men do them one day, the women the next. Jane doesn't see how this democratic division of labor fits in with the Ransom’s insistence that wives need to submit to their husbands, but the system seems to work; at last so long as the women don’t look too closely at the dishes on the guy’s day to wash.

Previously I've said that in Lewis’s world the gods and goddesses of classical myth are something like racial memories of the actual cosmic beings which rule the planets. This is not strictly true. There are echoes of those cosmic entities here on earth; reflections like the shadows in Plato’s cave of the actual planetary beings. “That is why there was an Italian Saturn as well as a Heavenly one,” Ransom explains, “and a Cretan Jove as well as an Olympian.”

Jane comes across such an avatar in the lodge: a tall, intimidating goddess in a flame-colored robe. Were she a pagan, Jane might worship her; were she a Christian, like Mother Dimble, she could trust in God’s protection. Lacking the spirituality of the former and the faith of the latter, Jane finds herself overwhelmed by the terrifying apparition.

Later Ransom offers another suggestion why the goddess seemed so terrifying, reflecting again Lewis’s orthodox views of gender. Jane is neither matron nor maid. She has renounced her role as a virgin – which is not by itself a bad thing – but has refused to take on the role of a mother. Are these the only two roles permitted a woman? I think Lewis over-simplifies things; and once again, I have to wonder how Dorothy L. Sayers would have written such a scene; but I have to admit, it makes sense that a fertility goddess would have strong opinions on this subject.

Ivy Maggs and Mrs. Dimble do not see the apparition. They lack Jane’s psychic sensitivity. But the goddess’s appearance probably has a good deal to do with the presence of Merlin. “We are not living exactly in the Twentieth Century as long as he’s here,” Ransom explains. “We overlap a bit; the focus is blurred.”

And what of Merlin? Merlin has been wondering about that himself. He’s been taken out of time for 1500 years and brought back in the present day to combat the Forces of Darkness; but what is he to do?
Ransom has been trying to bring him up to speed on the 20th Century, and he’s managed to wrap his brain around the idea that the present king is what he’d call a Saxon; but he doesn't understand why this king doesn't just send an army against Belbury and crush the N.I.C.E., or why the Ransom, the Pendragon, doesn't try to raise the populace against the tyrants. “They have an engine called the Press whereby the people are deceived,” Ransom tells him.

Merlin offers to summon magical forces to come to their aid, but Ransom forbids it. The spirits Merlin once commanded are long since gone, dormant under centuries of industrialization. Times have changed, and the kind of meddling with natural forces Merlin used to do is no longer permitted by the cosmic forces Ransom serves. “It was never very lawful even in your day.” Merlin is not sure that the forces of nature he knew are completely dormant, and from Jane’s experience in the lodge we see he may be right. Nevertheless, he concedes to Ransom’s other point.

But the question remains: what is Merlin here for and what is the Director’s plan? Ransom’s answer is the same as the one he earlier gave MacPhee. He is waiting on his Masters, the Oyarésu.

But surely they will not intervene directly, Merlin protests. The cosmic planetary powers are forbidden by divine edict from crossing the Lunar orbit, as part of the cease-fire decreed following the rebellion of Earth’s own Dark Archon.

Ah, but that’s just the thing. The treaty has already been broken. The cosmic entities were forbidden to cross the orbital embargo, but nobody ever said that humans using their own intelligence and science couldn't. By travelling to Mars, Weston has already crossed the line; and when the Enemy possessed Weston on his trip to Venus the decree was broken. The Oyarésu are now free to come to earth; but they too are waiting for something.

Jane’s husband Mark, meanwhile, is still a prisoner at the N.I.C.E. headquarters in Belbury, where Wither and Frost wish to initiate him into their Inner Circle. Mark wants nothing to do with the Institute. He has finally realized how they've been manipulating him all this time; but since he is a captive, he sees no choice but to play along while Frost subjects him to bizarre rituals which seem to be intended to desensitize him to societal taboos and, by extension, to ethical norms and conventional notions of Good and Evil in order to inculcate “Objectivity”.

Mark has an unexpected ally in the form of a nameless tramp, picked up by the N.I.C.E., whom Wither and Frost have mistaken for Merlin. The tramp has neglected to undeceive them, partially because they keep speaking to him in Latin; (they think he’s a 5th Century wizard who wouldn't understand Modern English) and so he assumes they are foreigners; and partially, I think, because he’s been arrested enough times to know that you never volunteer information to the cops. As far as the tramp is concerned, he’s been given a warm place to sleep, and good food. His confinement is undoubtedly better than many jails he’s been in. The tramp comes from a culture so alien to Mark that he has trouble understanding him; and yet Mark feels an affinity to him based on their shared captivity.

Every now and then, Wither and Frost come in with an expert in old Celtic languages hoping to find someone who can communicate with “Merlin”. They've been unsuccessful so far. The philologist Elwin Ransom would be an obvious choice, but their people have had difficulty in finding him; (undoubtedly one of the reasons why Ransom has changed his name to Fisher-King). Finally, Wither resorts to putting an ad in the newspaper for linguists.

When he sees this ad, Ransom knows that their opportunity has arrived.

That night, Ransom tells his household to remain downstairs. He and Merlin are going to entertain visitors in his upstairs study. The Oryarés are going to descend in person. In this memorable passage, Lewis describes parallel scenes how the presence of the gods affects the people in the manor house. Their conversation becomes lively and witty, almost giddy, as Vilitrilbia, whom men call Mercury, arrives; a sweet peacefulness descends upon them and the couples begin to snuggle as upstairs Perelandra, the personification of Venus appears. The men become more aggressive and impatient for action with the arrival of Mars. One by one, the great planetary powers manifest in Ransom’s study, and one by one, they infuse some of their power into Merlin.

These entities are mind-bogglingly powerful, and here I’m reminded of something from The Simarillion, by Lewis’s friend J.R.R. Tolkien. Although the Simarillion was not published in its finished form until after Tolkien’s death, he had read portions of the unfinished stories from it to his friends. Lewis might have borrowed this idea from his friend, or it is just as possible that they were both drawing off a shared Christian Cosmology.

In The Simarillion, the Valar, god-like beings subordinate to the Creator-God, are also barred from interfering in the affairs of Middle-Earth. They remain on the sidelines throughout Melkor’s age-long war against the elves until one of the elves makes the arduous voyage to return the last of the Simarils to Valinor. Only then do the Valar come to personally kick Melkor’s butt. The powers they unleash to do it, however, obliterates half of the continent.

Likewise, the Oyarsés could easily leave all of England a giant hole in the North Sea if they unleashed their full powers. Instead they are going to channel their powers through a mortal. This is why Merlin was important. Using their power thus is going to be hard on the vessel receiving it. The Oyarsés refuse to subject even a volunteer to this. But Merlin is no stranger to powerful spirits. He he has never met any of the Oyarsés scale before, but he has channeled supernatural forces. Metaphorically speaking, he is not a virgin. Merlin realizes he is not likely to survive this experience and it frankly terrifies him; but he understands that this is the purpose for which he has been brought here and so he resolves to go through with it.

The next day another visitor comes to the N.I.C.E; a Basque priest who understands not a word of English but who somehow has come in answer to Wither’s newspaper ad. When he is brought before the supposed “Merlin”, he is actually able to converse with him. This is because the priest is the real Merlin, using his Jedi Mind Tricks to control the tramp. We have a comical situation where Merlin is making the tramp give orders in ancient Celtic, which he then translates into Latin for Wither’s benefit.

Wither is perplexed by this situation. It certainly looks as if the priest is controlling the wizard instead of merely interpreting for him, but that couldn't possibly be the case. At Merlin’s orders, he gives the supposed wizard and his interpreter a tour of the Institute. Adding to his confusion, he realizes that a dinner has been scheduled for that evening with several important backers of the Institute in attendance. Of course, Merlin will have to attend, but how will Wither explain the wizard to all these big-wigs who think that the N.I.C.E. is all about Science?

As Wither goes off with the two Merlins, Frost takes Mark back to the Objective Room for another training session. A large table in the room has been moved aside to reveal an ornate carving on the floor depicting Christ nailed to the cross. Frost tells Mark to trample on the image.

Mark hesitates. He is not a Christian; unlike Jane he has never been one; but this seems so pointless. “This is all surely a pure superstition. … Well, if so, what is there objective about stamping on the face? Isn't it just as subjective to spit on a thing like this as to worship it? I mean – damn it all – if it’s only a bit of wood, why do anything about it?”

Frost insists. “Of course, it is a superstition; but it is that particular superstition which has pressed upon our society for a great many centuries.” But Mark looks at it another way.

Mark has never had a really firm grip on the notion of Good vs. Evil, but for the past few days, he has come to regard everything about Belbury as an affront to everything that he saw as Straight or Normal or Wholesome. Looking on the suffering man on the cross, he does not see it as a religious icon or an image of worship; he sees it as what happens when the Straight meets the Crooked; what the N.I.C.E. would do to him if he refused to warp himself in their demented image.

Frost prods him. “Do you intend to go on with the training or not?”
Mark made no reply. He was thinking, and thinking hard because he knew, that if he stopped even for a moment, mere terror of death would take the decision out of his hands. Christianity was a fable. It would be ridiculous to die for a religion one did not believe. This Man himself, on that very cross, had discovered it to be a fable, and had died complaining that the God in whom he trusted had forsaken him – had, in fact, found the universe a cheat. But this raised a question that Mark had never thought of before. Was that the moment at which to turn against the Man? If the universe was a cheat, was that a good reason for joining its side? Supposing the Straight was utterly powerless, always and everywhere certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally killed by the Crooked, what then? Why not go down with the ship? He began to be frightened by the very fact that his fears seemed to have momentarily vanished. They had been a safeguard … they had prevented him, all his life, from making mad decisions like that which he was now making as he turned to Frost and said, 
“It’s all bloody nonsense, and I’m damned if I do any such thing.”
And here things start to get really surreal.

The session is interrupted by the simultaneous arrival of Wither’s little tour group, and the dinner guests, including Jules, the self-important public face of the N.I.C.E. Most critics regard him as a particularly unkind caricature of H.G. Wells, and they are probably correct. Jules knows nothing about the Macrobes, the diabolical cosmic entities who control the Institute through the severed head of the executed murderer Alcasan; he knows nothing about the severed head. He thinks that he’s in charge of the Institute, and part of Wither’s job is to keep him thinking that. Jules does not understand what the old man in the robes and the foreign priest are doing here, and it takes all of Wither’s powers of diplomacy and double-talk to soothe him.
Mark is allowed to change into dinner clothes. This is England after all, and there are some societal norms which even Objectivists like Frost must follow.

The dinner is a peculiar one. The tramp seems to be enjoying himself, accepting the bizarre things that are happening to him with a cheerful fatalism. During the dinner, several things happen, and Lewis show them unfolding as they occur to several individuals.

Wither first notices something wrong when in the middle of his after dinner speech, Jules makes a remark about something being “as gross an anachronism as to trust to Calvary for salvation in modern war.” Of course, he means “cavalry”; “Calvary” is the name of the hill upon which Christ was crucified; and Jules’s significant slip has always stuck in my mind to keep me from confusing the two words. But the next sentence out of his mouth is utter gibberish, and not the type of gobbledygook platitudes he usually uttered.
Wither tries to prevent Jules from embarrassing himself further by taking the podium himself, but finds the guests staring at him as if he were speaking gibberish too. Actually, everyone in the room has suddenly lost the ability to communicate intelligibly.

Frost attempts to pass a note to Fairy Hardcastle, but the note reads “Blunt frippers intantly to pointed bdeluroid. Purgent. Cost.”. So she takes a wild guess as to what her boss wants. She discreetly gets up from the table, locks all the doors leading out of the dining room, pulls out a pistol, and shoots Jules dead.
That’s when the real panic starts. And that’s when the ferocious man-eating tiger comes out of the kitchen. Tiger? What’s going on here?

What has happened is that Merlin has unleashed the Curse of Babel on the crowd. You may recall that the novel’s title, “That Hideous Strength”, comes from a medieval poem about the Tower of Babel, that dreadful stronghold. Merlin now possesses the power of Mercury, the god of Language, to take away their ability to communicate. I recently read another critic who observed that the curse doesn't end with language; With the power of Mars, he removed from the N.I.C.E. the martial discipline they once had and with the power of Venus the camaraderie and co-operation they once enjoyed. Well, to be honest, the crew at Belbury despised all those things; their organization was based on fear, not discipline; on ambition, not comradeship; and they used language as a tool to deceive, not to communicate. So, in a way, Merlin is merely taking away from them virtues which they weren't using anyway.

Merlin leaves the banquet hall quietly without being observed and takes the tramp with him. No one sees the tramp again, although I like to think he made off with some of the N.I.C.E.’s silverware and got many a drink at the local pub telling of his adventures. Merlin goes to the labs where the animals are kept for vivisection experiments and frees them, sending them to the dining room. To dine. Here he finds Mr. Bultitude, and gives him a special blessing, temporarily freeing him from the tameness Ransom had imposed upon him and reminding the bear that he is a carnivore.

Merlin also releases other captives, prisoners who have been transferred from the local jails to the N.I.C.E. as part of the Institute’s takeover of local civil government. One of these prisoners is Ivy Maggs’s husband, and Merlin gives the man a note from his wife instructing him to come to St. Anne’s, but to avoid Edgestow.
Belbury is now utter chaos, which is only intensified when the Macrobes, seeing that their plans have been upended, decide to destroy their tools. Wither along with Filostrato and Straik flee to lab where Alcasan’s severed head is kept.. The men find themselves compelled to worship the head as if it were some kind of scientific Lord of the Flies. Then the head commands them to get it a new one, and Filostrato finds himself dragged off to the lab’s mini-guillotine. They kill Filostrato and are in the process of trying to kill each other when Mr. Bultitude comes in to finish the job.

Frost finds himself compelled, as if his body was controlled by superior forces, to gather all the flammables in the lab and immolate himself.

Lord Feverstone, ever the opportunist, manages to slip out of the banquet before everything goes pear-shaped; but when he heads towards Edgestow, he finds an exodus of people leaving it. He presses onward, and so is swallowed up by the unexpected earthquake which destroys the town.

As it happens, very few people die in the destruction of Edgestow. Many had already been displaced. Many more providentially left town for seemingly coincidental reasons. But in any case, the only people left in Edgestow when it was destroyed were the Very Good, who were ready for Heaven anyway, and the Very Bad, who were getting what they deserved. George Orwell disliked this eldila ex machina ending, feeling that it detracted from a perfectly good cautionary dystopia; but Lewis re-wrote Paradise Lost so that the Snake loses; he’s not about to end the novel with a boot on humanity’s face forever.

The next morning, many of the animals freed from the N.I.C.E. turn up at St. Anne’s. Mr. Bultitude returns, in the company of a friendly she-bear. Many of the other animals also have arrived two-by-two and celebrate their new freedom under the blessing and sanction of the goddess Venus. “This is becoming indecent,” MacPhee complains as the elephants begin copulating in the garden. “On the contrary,” Ransom replies, “decent in the old sense, decens, fitting is just what it is.”

Lord Byron once said that every tragedy is ended with a death, and every comedy with a marriage. This comedy ends with couples united. Ivy is reunited with her husband. And then there’s Jane.

The Director is bidding all his friends good-bye. Ransom’s task here is finished. He is ready to go. Like Frodo, he has suffered wounds which cannot be healed in this world; but the eldila are going to come and take him to Perelandra, where he will wait with Arthur and a handful of others until the End of Days.
Jane would like to stay with the Director until he leaves, but Ransom tells her that she is being waited for. “Your husband is waiting for you in the Lodge. It was your own marriage chamber that you prepared. Should you not go to him?”

Since Ransom requests it, she accedes to his will. “But – but – am I a bear or a hedgehog?” Is she just another female to be paired off at the end?

“More. But not less,” Ransom says. “You will have no more dreams. Have children instead.”

Mark too has escaped the chaos at Belbury. Merlin also found him and gave him a letter from his one-time friend Dennison, telling him that his wife was waiting for him at St. Anne’s-on-the-Hill.

When he was a prisoner at Belbury, he flattered himself in thinking himself heroically resisting the N.I.C.E. He doesn't feel so heroic now, and can only think of how badly he’s treated Jane and how unworthy he is of her. What he’s feeling is the flip side of Paul’s admonition for wives to obey their husbands; the husbands need to strive to be deserving of that deference. As he approaches the small cottage on the manor property he encounters a gigantic woman in a flame-colored robe with a beautiful but sternly enigmatic face who opens the door for him and wordlessly commands him to enter.

Jane does not see the goddess this time. But she sees through the window that Mark has left his shirt lying draped over a chair. How like the man. She goes in to him.

And do Mark and Jane really reunite and re-establish their relationship? Lord Byron would say yes. And so would every Happily Ever After. But for all his theoretical musings on the proper relation between the sexes, C.S. Lewis never shows the two actually together and trying to make things work.


So maybe it’s best to leave it as a Happy Ending. Jack has his Jill, and the Forces of Darkness have for a time been forestalled. The darkness will gather again, but for the time being Venus presides over St. Anne’s and elephants are dancing in the rose garden.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

The Ones You Didn't Hear in Sunday School

Shameless Self-Promotion Time again, folks.

Our Peerless Leader, Alex, suggested that I plug one of my other blogs here.  The name of it is The Ones You Didn't Hear in Sunday School, and it's sort of like the pieces I've been posting on Poplitiko about science fiction novels and applying the same treatment to some of the more obscure stories of the Bible.

Here's how I introduce it in the blog:

Some Bible stories are better-known than others.  Even people without a strong religious background have probably heard of David and Goliath, or Jonah and the Whale, or the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  They’re part of our Western Cultural Heritage, like Cinderella or Snow White or Star Wars: The New Hope. 
But how many people have heard about Dinah and the Shechemites?  Or Abigail and her Really Stupid Husband?  Or the Parable of the Sleazy Embezzler? 
There are some stories in the Bible that are not widely known. They don't often come up in Sunday School; sometimes because they are too violent, sometimes because they have sex in them; sometimes because they are disturbing and have no easy morals to apply; and sometimes they're just plain weird. Sometimes these stories present challenges to the Christian Faith because they seem to contradict what we want to believe.
Whether difficult or disturbing, confusing or confounding, lewd or just plain ludicrous; all these stories are a part of our religious heritage.  Whether we like it or not. 

One of the things I'm trying to do with this blog is show some of the ways these oddball stories of Scripture turn up in our popular culture.  Like when Hamlet puzzles Polonius by remarking that Jephthah had a daughter -- what did he mean by that?  Or when a TV pundit refers to a political shibboleth, what's he talking about?

Perhaps you did hear these stories in Sunday School; perhaps you might have forgotten them; but if you have a curiosity about what happens when Holy Writ gets weird, stop by and give my blog a look.

Thursday, May 8, 2014

C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy: That Hideous Strength (part 4)

There has always been two Englands: a nation of shopkeepers and a nation of poets; behind every Arthur a Mordred and behind every Milton a Cromwell. The secular land of Britain ruled by the King, and Logres, the spiritual core, ruled by the Pendragon. There have been eras, as in the time of Arthur, when the King and the Pendragon were one and the same. Currently, Logres consists of about maybe a dozen people and a trained bear living in a commune at the Manor of St. Anne’s-on-the-Hill near the university town of Edgestow, and it’s director, the current Pendragon, is Mr. Fisher-King, formerly the philologist Elwin Ransom.

St. Anne’s stands in opposition to the National Institue of Co-ordinated Experiments at Belbury, or the N.I.C.E., a think-tank ostensibly dedicated to improving society through scientific means but actually to imposing a totalitarian regime on the world. The Director has done very little to actually combat this threat, though, apart from raising vegetables and taking in the occasional stray, like Mr. Bultitude, the tame bear; or the Dimbles and Ivy Maggs, evicted from their homes by the N.I.C.E., or Jane Studdock, seeking answers to her disturbing dreams. MacPhee, the group’s resident skeptic, finds this lack of action infuriating, but Ransom says he is waiting for instructions from his Masters, the cosmic entities he calls the eldila.


This wait is about to end.

Jane’s clairvoyant dreams have revealed that the forces behind the N.I.C.E. seek to revive the wizard Merlin, who like sleeping under Bragdon Wood, a piece of property formerly owned by nearby Bracton college but recently acquired by the Institute. They've been delayed in their search because the ground of the wood is marshy and needs to be drained before they can perform major excavations.

This makes me wonder: why was Merlin buried in such an unsuitable location? Well, from a plot point of view, it’s an excuse to delay the N.I.C.E. while they much about diverting the river flowing through Edgestow to drain the marsh and displace half the population in the process. But there is another peculiar parallel.

In his History of the Kings of Britain, medieval historian Geoffrey of Monmouth tells of how King Vortigern tried to build a tower but the foundation kept collapsing. His seers advised him to sprinkle the foundation with the blood of a fatherless boy. They find such a child, the son of no mortal man, but the boy is himself a seer who reveals that there is a lake under the tower with two dragons, symbolizing the Saxons and the Britons.

Which doesn't actually have anything to do with the story, except for the swamp and the legend that Merlin, the boy in Geoffrey’s tale, was rumored to have an inhuman father. This is why the N.I.C.E. thinks they can recruit him for their side.

Ransom is not entirely sure about that. He notes that the magic of Merlin, as portrayed in legend, seems of a different sort than that of the wannabe sorcerers and alchemists of the Renaissance.
“What common measure is there,” [Dimble] would ask, ‘between ceremonial occultists like Faustus and Prospero and Archimago with their midnight studies, their forbidden books, their attendant fiends or elementals, and a figure like Merlin who seems to produce his results simply by being Merlin?” And Ransom agreed. He thought that Merlin’s art was the last survival of something older and different – something brought to Western Europe after the fall of Numinor and going back to an era in which the general relations of mind and matter on this planet had been other than those we know.
(And yes, C.S. Lewis is giving a shout-out here to his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, who at the time Lewis wrote this was still struggling to finish The Lord of the Rings. The tribute bugged Tolkien, because Lewis misspelled “Numenor.”)

Jane’s latest dream has shown her a tunnel leading to Merlin’s resting place. The entrance, an ancient and forgotten cairn, lies outside of Bragdon Wood and the property under the N.I.C.E.’s control. This is the opportunity Ransom has been waiting for. He sends a small team, guided by Jane, to the site; but when they get there, they find that the sealed tunnel entrance has been broken open – from the inside. The stones have been rolled away and the tomb is empty.

Jane’s husband, Mark, meanwhile, has been arrested for the murder of William Hingset. He’s pretty sure that the N.I.C.E. really killed Hingset and framed him for it; but he has finally come to realize that the management philosophy of the Institute greatly resembles the aphorism of Nixon’s: Once you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. Not that I think Lewis was familiar with the wit and wisdom of Richard Nixon, but he undoubtedly knew the sentiment.

Mark is not actually being held by the police; he’s in N.I.C.E. custody. Wither and Frost, the chief administrators of the N.I.C.E. have decided to let Mark sit in a holding cell overnight, believing that marinating in apprehension and fear for a few hours will make him more compliant. And it might have too, except that Mark has been dwelling on the royal chewing out that Dr. Dimble gave him on his visit to Edgestow.

In Lewis’s stories, the most important action always seems to occur in the protagonists’ heads, which is possibly why they are so infrequently adapted. Here Mark looks back on his own life and takes stock of what a mess he’s made of it. He should have seen immediately that Wither, with his alternating vague flattery and vague threats, was playing mind games with him. Except that Dick Devine, Lord Feverstone, had vouched for him. And why did he ever trust Feverstone, with his flashy, cynical manner and his insincere grin? Because Feverstone seemed so wise and knowing compared to puppets like his old colleague Curry. But he didn’t always think Curry was a puppet…

Mark comes to the disquieting realization that all his life he’s been trying to get into the “in crowd” and he has nothing to show for it. Even when he was a boy in school, he ditched his best friend in order to get into a popular clique. And for what? The only real joy he’s gotten out of life has been from people outside his ambition track, like his sister, like his boyhood pal, like his friend Denniston from his undergraduate days, and like Jane. He realizes with horror that in his deepest fantasies about his career, he pictured Jane as serving as a kind of Perfect Hostess whose beauty and charm would reflect credit on her husband; not an individual in her own right, but merely an extension of himself. Mark recoils at this thought and realizes glumly that perhaps his being hanged for murder might be the best thing that could happen to Jane.

He now realizes that he has somehow wound up on the wrong side. He doesn't think of it as a matter of Good and Evil, or even of Right and Wrong, because, as Lewis frequently tells us, his upbringing and education have provided him with no sort of ethical grounding. All he knows is that he wants to be on Jane’s side, and that he doesn't want to be on Belbury’s.

It is while he is in this state of mind that Frost comes to visit him. Frost and Wither have decided to accelerate their “treatment” of him. Frost believes that initiating him into the innermost circle of the Institute will be the impetus to bring him completely on their side.

Frost is a pure Materialist; he believes that all emotions, all morals and all social interactions are at their root merely chemical reactions in the brain. But this does not mean he does not believe in a Higher Power. He explains to Mark the existence of beings he calls “Macrobes”. Not microbes, mind you – “The formation of the word explains itself.” -- but beings as far above human reasoning and intelligence as humans are above the bacteria.
“These organisms, then,” said Mark, “are friendly to humanity?” 
“If you reflect for a moment,” said Frost, “you will see that your question has no meaning except on the level of the crudest popular thought.”
It occurs to me that Lewis is playing here with the toys of H.P. Lovecraft; although being Christian, Lewis uses them for different ends.

It is these macrobes who are the true force behind the organization at Belbury. Filostrato, the Italian transhumanist, is deluded. Although he has doubtless scored a great scientific achievement in keeping the severed head of the scientist Alcasan functional, it is not Alcasan who commands the N.I.C.E. but rather the macrobes using the Head as a conduit. Frost coolly explains the goal to cull humanity until only the intellectual and technological elite remain. The previous two wars, he says, are merely the first of a series of sixteen wars scheduled for the 20th Century as part of this plan.

Mark finds these revelations abhorrent; yet at the same time enticing. Now he is on the verge of becoming the ultimate insider, one of the handful of mortals who really know what is going on.

But the interview is cut short. Frost is summoned away. Merlin has been found.

The workmen excavating Bragdon Wood uncovered the empty burial chamber, and followed the tunnel to the surface. After a search on the dark and rainy moor, they came across a bearded old man, weathered and gnarled, lying naked in some sort of a trance. They immediately brought him back to the Institute.

He is nothing like what Wither and Frost expected. When the stranger awakens, Wither addresses him in Latin, for of course a 5th Century wizard would not know modern English; but the man does not seem to understand. He happily accepts the food and drink Wither provides, although he seems more interested in the beer than in the bottle of port; but he says nothing; he doesn't even seem to pay attention to Wither at all. Most of all, Wither is disturbed by the man’s face; it shows none of the signs he associates with a “Master”, or even one who could be made into a “Master.” Still, Merlin is a man from the 5th Century. One must make allowances for these things.

Except this man is not Merlin.

The real Merlin appears at the door of St. Anne’s, dressed in the raggedy clothes of a tramp. He at first mistakes Ransom and MacPhee for servants, and he puts MacPhee to sleep using something the narration describes as hypnotism but which seems more akin to Jedi Mind Tricks. He does not believe Ransom’s claim to be the Master of the House and challenges him to answer three questions of Ancient Lore. Ransom can answer him from the knowledge he gained in his trips through the Heavens and his conversations with the eldila. Merlin acknowledges him as Pendragon.

When the party sent out to look for Merlin returns, they find the two men in conversation. Merlin shocks the party by calling Jane “the falsest lady of any at this time alive” and suggests that it would be a charity for the Pendragon to order her head chopped off.

And here we run up against another of Lewis’s bêtes noires; one which is frustrating because it seems so irrelevant to his story. Merlin’s condemnation of Jane comes because she uses birth control. Now what does that have to do with anything?

A couple reasons. The first one, which Merlin gives, is that if Jane and her husband had conceived a child, he would have grown up to be a great champion in the struggle against Evil. They didn't, and the opportunity has passed. This doesn't mean that Evil will win; but it means that a good which could have happened now won’t, and something else will happen instead.

Another reason is that Lewis wants to emphasize for us that Merlin is a man from another century. Like the old saying goes, the Past is a another country; they do things differently there. Lewis gives us a couple of vignettes in the next chapter or two to illustrate how different in manner and psychology Merlin is from a 20th Century man. He just whacks us in the skull with this first instance.

But deeper than that, it resonates with Lewis’s greater theme of marriage and the relationship between the sexes. We've seen that Mark and Jane are in an unhappy marriage. Throughout the book, Lewis introduces other relationships with which to compare them. We have the Dennisons, a happily-married couple; we have the Dimbles, an old established marriage, which like the Studdocks’ is childless, but unlike theirs is not childless by choice. Mrs. Dimble is a loving, maternal woman, who over the years has become a surrogate mother for her husband’s many students. Ivy Maggs has a difficult marriage in that her husband has had trouble with the law, but was mostly reformed since marrying her. This hasn't ended his problems with the law, but she deeply loves him despite his fallibility. Neither the argumentative MacPhee nor the intimidating Miss Ironwood are married, although Ransom at one point jokes that if they continue fighting he might be forced to marry them. One gets the strong sense that Miss Ironwood is in love with Ransom, but it is a chaste love which she understands will never be consummated.

On the Belbury side, we have no married couples. Fairy Hardcastle is portrayed as an unnatural woman with mannish habits. She likes her subordinates to be fluffy girly girls; she is less Pussy Galore than Rosa Klebb. The scientist Filostrato is described as a eunuch. But then there are the natives of Sulva, which we call the Moon. Filostrato earlier described how the inhabitants of the Moon had almost succeeded in purging their sphere of biological life forms. In Merlin’s riddle challenge with Ransom, we learn that the people of Sulva practice “cold marriages”, where couples mate not with each other, but with artificial surrogates; and that children are incubated in artificial wombs. Merlin lumps birth control in with these other “practices of Sulva”; as being unnatural.

Nevertheless, I can’t help but feel that both Merlin and Lewis are being needlessly dogmatic here, and if Dorothy Sayers were writing the book she would have done things much differently. This section never fails to take me completely out of the story.

Merlin grudgingly allows that Jane will not be decapitated; one of the many aspects of the 20th Century he has difficulty grasping. But despite his bloodthirsty impulses, he is not on the Enemy’s side. The tale of his being the offspring of a demon he calls a lie. He has always been on the side of Heaven, and he is willing to serve the present Pendragon.

Mark continues grappling with his conscience. He is more convinced than ever that wants no part of the N.I.C.E., but he keeps finding his thoughts slipping back into old habits and familiar patterns. In this Lewis is a little more realistic than some of his latter-day admirers, who claim that once you have your Moment of Conversion you are Heaven Bound. Lewis had enough difficulty with his own conversion to know it isn't that easy. Mark has a vague sense that it ought to be, though, and that he ought to be rewarded for finally resolving to Do The Right Thing. It seems unfair of the Universe that he keeps sliding back.

Frost now institutes a new phase of Mark’s initiation; one designed to break down his preconceptions. He is taken to a special room, called the “Objective Room” where everything, by design, is just a little bit off. Mark quickly realizes the point of all this; Frost wants to break him of preconceived notions of Good and Bad by immersing him in an environment where nothing is regular and everything is just slightly crooked. He puts Mark through exercises where he is made to perform pointless, silly, but non-normative actions. Mark plays along with Frost’s little games because he sees little else he can do, but the whole farce does the exact opposite of what Frost intends: it helps solidify Mark's idea that there is Normal and there is Abnormal and he wants to be on the side of Normality.

He is aided in this by an unexpected ally. The mysterious stranger whom Wither mistook for Merlin has been put in the same sleeping quarters as Mark. It turns out that the man is a tramp. He hasn't spoken to Wither and Frost, because they keep talking to him in Latin so he assumes that they’re foreigners. The man seems a cheerful fatalist, who takes being a prisoner in stride. It seems that the night before a fellow came across the tramp and somehow commanded him to give him his clothing -- the real Merlin. Mark has difficulty understanding what the man says, and the man understands as little of Mark; but Mark comes to regard him as an ally against Wither and Frost. And in a way, Mark has finally become the Ultimate Insider. After all, he now possesses a secret that both Wither and Frost would dearly love to have, and he has become friends with a man whose intimacy they desire.


NEXT:  The Gods Descend; Dinner at Belbury, and Venus Comes to St. Anne’s

Thursday, May 1, 2014

C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy: That Hideous Strength (part 3)

When I was growing up back in the ‘70s, my Mom used to fret about cults and worried that my brother or I might get “sucked into” one.

Jane Studdock is also worried about getting “sucked into” the group from the Manor of St. Anne’s-on-the-Hill, a small community opposed to a sinister conspiracy out to take over the government; but she’s come to trust her new friends the Dennisons, who are members of the St. Anne’s group. They've convinced her that her strange dreams truly are clairvoyant.

Jane’s husband, Mark wants to be “sucked in”. He’s always longed to be an insider, one of the “in crowd”, one of the people “in the know”. The National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments (or the N.I.C.E.) seemed like a wonderful opportunity. The people at the Institute have tempted him with glimpses behind the curtain, “love bombed” him with flattery and drinks, and kept him off-balance by cutting him off from his previous acquaintances and alternating the promises and ego-boos with truly frightening threats of what might happen if he decided to leave. And he is getting in deeper.


Mark and Jane are each about to meet the respective heads of these organizations.

Lately, Jane’s dreams have included a disturbing man with a pointed beard and pince-nez glasses who seems to be observing her and taking notes. She doesn't know it, but this man is Frost, one of the Inner Circle at the N.I.C.E, who wants to put her psychic visions to the Institute’s service. That is why they are so interested in recruiting her husband, so they can get at her. When Jane happens to see Frost in real life one day on the streets of Edgestow, she finally decides to return to St. Anne’s to meet with its Director.

The Director is actually Elwin Ransom, the hero of the previous two books in the trilogy. He has changed his name to Fisher-King at the request of an eccentric relative’s bequest, which has helped conceal his identity from the powers behind his enemies.

His previous journeys through Deep Heaven have changed him. He is no longer the fearful, self-doubting middle-aged academic whom Weston and Devine kidnapped in Out of the Silent Planet. He has gained understanding of cosmic mysteries, and he regularly converses with the eldila, entities without physical bodies as we know them, native to the depths of space who might easily, and have been, identified as gods or angels. His journey to the unfallen world of Perelandra has physically changed him as well; his brief stay in Paradise has rejuvenated him, giving him a youthful appearance and a sense of vitality.

It has also, like the Fisher-King of Arthurian legend, left him with an unhealing wound, which is an unending source of pain. This also brings to mind the prophecy made to the Serpent in Genesis:
"And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." (Gen. 3:15 KJV)
This is generally considered by Christians to be a prophecy of Christ, smiting Satan though taking a grievous wound. This is probably why I never made the connection before, but Lewis must have been thinking of it. Ransom, a descendant of Eve by virtue of being human, crushed the Tempter’s head when he killed the demonically-possessed Weston; but Weston bit him, rendering him hopelessly lame.

Jane is awed by the Director’s presence. He seems radiant and, well, kingly. And in a certain respect, he is a king. He is the Pendragon, a title going back to Arthurian times denoting the head of Logres, the spiritual core of Britain. These days Logres consists of less than a dozen people and a trained bear, but he still carries with him a sense of kingly awe, which is a reflection of the awe generated by the heavenly beings with whom he converses.

Lewis is scrupulously careful not to say that Jane falls in love with the Director, although his description sounds a lot like that. Her reaction is certainly not sexual; perhaps a profound admiration would be a better description. Upon meeting him, all Jane’s doubts about the group at St. Anne’s vanishes and she is willing to side with the Director. Which is why it frustrates her that he keeps on bringing her back to her husband.

The Director, you see, feels that Jane should not come to stay at St. Anne’s unless her husband is okay with it. Jane bridles at the thought of having to go to Mark for permission, but the Director insists that on something this important, husband and wife need to be on the same page. He claims these are rules his Masters would insist upon. The fact that Mark is currently with the N.I.C.E. complicates things, and the Director does not want a situation where Jane would be divided in loyalty between St. Anne’s and her husband. Jane doesn’t see how Mark’s opinions have anything to do with the matter and there follows a lengthy discussion on the subject of obedience and the proper relationship between Men and Women. Jane isn’t fully convinced, but she agrees to go home and ask Mark to leave the N.I.C.E.

She never gets the chance. As she disembarks from the train arriving in Edgestow, she finds herself caught up in the middle of the riot which the N.I.C.E. has engineered to fit in with their propaganda campaign. Trying to avoid the crush of the mob, she gets picked up by the N.I.C.E.’s private security force and ends up in a room being interviewed by Fairy Hardcastle.

Fairy sees this as a golden opportunity and begins interrogating Jane to learn where she has been. When Jane is reluctant to co-operate, Fairy becomes more sadistic with her questioning and tortures her with the lit end of her cigar. But in transporting Jane across town, the police car breaks down in the middle of the still-ongoing riot and Jane is able to escape. A friendly bystander helps her back onto a train and she returns to St. Anne’s. Edgestow is no longer safe for her.

Mark is oblivious to all this. He hears about the riot after the fact and takes some pleasure that the propaganda he wrote for the N.I.C.E. seems to have been useful. In the wake of the riots, the public, swayed by the talking points the Institute had prepared before the riots even occurred, are now demanding that the N.I.C.E. take over the reins of local government.

He has met other members of the N.I.C.E. elite: Straik, the “mad parson” who is obsessed with the idea that the Institute will bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, and Filostrato, a brilliant Italian scientist and a eunuch. Straik is intended to represent the modernist theology which ignores stuffy church doctrine and concentrates on social programs, but in his manner and speech, he is a full-barrel fire & brimstone Evangelical. Filostrato, I suppose, is what we would today call a Transhumanist. He looks forward to the day when man can overcome the limits of biology. I mentioned he was a eunuch, didn’t I?

In one conversation he goes into his philosophy, rhapsodizing on the ideal tree: an artificial one made of aluminum.
“At present, I allow, we must have forests, for the atmosphere. Presently we find a chemical substitute. And then, why any natural trees? … You shave your face: even, in the English fashion, you shave him every day. One day we shave the planet.”
His ideal world will someday do away with organic matter altogether. His vision recalls the passage in The War of the Worlds comparing Wells’s Martians to a hypothetical future human, where the brain has evolved much larger and more complex and all the other bodily organs have atrophied leaving only what is necessary to sustain the super-brain.

Filostrato takes Mark aside and tells him that he will be taken to see the Head. This confuses Mark, because he understood that Jules, the public face of the Institute, was unimportant. “You were mistaken … Our Head is no figurehead.”

He goes on to explain that his ideal of a pure, sterile world has already been achieved on the Moon. It is, he tells Mark, inhabited, but the technologically advanced natives have completely purified their world, all except for a small, stubborn patch of green on the far side held by savages. He has learned this from the Head himself. The Head is the one who commanded that Mark bring his wife to the N.I.C.E.’s headquarters in Belbury, and has ordered that Mark be brought before it.

Mark is confused. He still thinks Filostrato is talking about Jules.
“Do you mean really to join us, young man?” said Straik. “There is no turning back once you have set your hand to the plough. And there are no reservations. The Head has sent for you. Do you understand – the Head? You will look upon one who was killed and is still alive. The resurrection of Jesus in the Bible was a symbol: tonight, you shall see what it symbolized. This is real man at last, and it claims all our allegiance.” 
“What the devil are you talking about?” said Mark. The tension of his nerves distorted his voice into a hoarse blustering cry. 
“My friend is quite right,” said Filostrato. “Our Head is the first of the New Men – the first that lives beyond animal life. As far as Nature is concerned, he is already dead: if Nature had her way his brain would now be mouldering in the grave. But he will speak to you within this hour, and – a word in your ear, my friend – you will obey his orders.”
The Head on the N.I.C.E. is Alcasan, the French scientist recently executed for murder, whom Jane dreamed about and about whom the N.I.C.E. had Mark work on articles rehabilitating his reputation. Filostrato has managed to keep the Saracen’s Head alive, like Donovan’s Brain, and it has been giving the Institute its orders.

We do not witness Mark’s interview with the Head directly; we hear Jane’s description of a dream she had in which she witnessed it. This makes our experience of the ghastly disembodied head less visceral, but manages to build the suspense of the scene better as she bit by bit describes what she sees.

This latest dream confirms that the malignant conspiracy the Director seeks to thwart is headquartered in Belbury, something he previously only suspected. It also confirms that Jane’s husband is deep inside the N.I.C.E., although perhaps not irredeemably deep. He seemed even more squicked by the Head in the dream than Jane did and passed out.

Jane is pretty much established in the community of St. Anne’s now. The group seems more like a commune than a secret organization. The Dennisons, she knows, are members. So is her old tutor Dr. Dimble and his wife, Mother Dimble. Like the Studdocks, the Dimbles are childless, but not by choice; yet Mrs. Dimble is a warm, motherly person and her husband’s many students over the years have become surrogate children to her. Jane is also surprised to see Ivy Maggs, the woman who used to do her cleaning once a week, in the house; and more surprised to see her acting, and treated, as an equal in the company. Jane’s modernist views seem to still have a bit of class-consciousness in them; or perhaps she didn't expect someone with such old-fashioned views of marriage as the Director to have such egalitarian views as to doing chores around the house.

Rounding out the commune are Grace Ironwood, whom Jane met on her first visit to St. Anne’s, a doctor who considers the Director’s health to be her primary responsibility; Angus MacPhee, an argumentative Ulsterman (not a Scotsman, thank you) who is an old friend of the Director’s and an arch-skeptic who provided the role of Devil’s Advocate; and Mr. Bultitude, a bear who just sort of wandered in one day and became a member of the family. (St. Anne’s has become a sort of second Eden, with animals and humans living in harmony, thanks to the Director’s influence; another side-effect of his brief sojourn in Paradise).

MacPhee is an affectionate parody of Lewis’s old tutor William T. Kirkpatrick, “The Great Knock”, who instilled in Lewis a rigorous appreciation for Logic when he was a young man. Kirkpatrick appears in as the jolly Professor Kirke in the Narnia books, as well as the crotchety and skeptical dwarf Trumpkin. In That Hideous Strength, MacPhee is played largely for laughs, but Lewis obviously has a great deal of affection for him. He is on the side of the Angels, even if he insists on observing that there is no verifiable proof that angels exist. The Director values him as an old friend, and also as an unblinkingly honest man who helps keep the group grounded in reality even when dealing with extraplanetary entities.

“He’ll be about our best man if we’re going to be defeated,” the Director says. “You couldn't have a better man at your side in a losing battle. What he’ll do if we win, I can’t imagine.”

Jane’s dreams have also given the Director important clues as to the N.I.C.E.’s goals. She has dreamed about a man with a long beard sleeping underground. Bragdon Wood, the piece of property bought by the Institute from Bracton college, has long had legendary associations with the stories of King Arthur, especially of the wizard Merlin. A powerful wizard would be a valuable tool for the forces behind the N.I.C.E., especially considering the legends that Merlin was the offspring of a mortal woman and a demon.

Meanwhile, Mark has recovered from his revolting and terrifying interview with the Head. The pressure on him has become even greater to bring his wife to Belbury. He tries writing a letter to her, but has trouble drafting it. On one level, he is so terrified, he’d be willing to do anything. But then he wonders if they will force Jane to look upon the Head as well, and this he can’t stomach either. Fairy Hardcastle visits him and hints that his wife might have some hereditary mental problems. She claims that Jane has been making false accusations of being tortured by the N.I.C.E. security. (This is some butt-covering on the Fairy’s part; Wither had been very displeased with the way she handled Jane’s arrest during the riot).

Wither calls Mark in for another dressing down. He tells Mark that his billfold, lost several days ago when he first came to Belbury, was found next to the murdered body of William Hingest. Mark realizes it must have been planted there; but he also realizes that now they have an irrevocable hold over him. Since the billfold is in the hands of N.I.C.E. security and not the regular police, he has nothing to worry about. But he is to bring his wife to Belbury. Immediately.

Mark decides to flee. He tried to do this once before, but the sudden sight of Wither strolling the grounds cowed him. This time, he is determined. Once again, he sees Wither, although the latter seems not to notice him. Mark charges the man and passes right through him. Was it only Mark’s imagination? Or can Wither actually send phantom projections of himself to wander the corridors of the Institute? Mark doesn't care, he just wants to get back home.

Arriving in Edgestow, he finds it mostly deserted. Much of the population has been displaced, and the remainder are like citizens living under the occupation of an invading force; the N.I.C.E. He goes back to his home, but Jane isn't there; nor has she been for some days. He guesses that she might be staying with the Dimbles, so he goes to the nearby woman’s college where Dr. Dimble teaches to confront him.

The interview does not go anything like he expects. Dimble refuses to tell Mark where Jane is. “I have no permission to tell you. She is not in my house nor under my protection. She is well and happy and safe. If you still have the slightest regards for her happiness you will make no attempt to get in touch with her.” Dimble tells Mark about Jane’s arrest by N.I.C.E. security and pointedly says that since these are Mark’s friends who did this, he has no reason to trust Mark.

All Mark’s self-righteous bluster fails him. He pleads to see his wife and claims that he’ll leave the Institute. Dimble softens a bit. If Mark will come with him right away, Dimble will take him to safety; but it must be now. Mark’s old indecision comes back and he hesitates. He asks for an hour to think about it.

Leaving Dimble’s office, Mark doesn't even get an hour. As he arrives at his lodgings, he is accosted by policemen who arrest him for the murder of William Hingest.


NEXT:  Merlin awakes! But who will get to him first? And cue the Holst music for the Descent of the Gods!