Keram's Book Report

Notes & Reflections on Books n Stuff I Have Experienced

Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis

I read this book when I was a kid – maybe 15 years old. It left an indelible impression on my though I could never pinpoint why. I suppose things happen, but there is a decided lack of bombastic adventure that shifted my energy in engaging it. Like a Brian Eno album, where you stop looking for choruses and instead surrender to the zone.

That said, I revisited the book via an audiobook version read by a colorful British narrator. The book now struck me as a sort of Lord of the Rings pastoral, seemingly innocuous beginning into something that must have influenced the 1970’s animated sci-fi erotic film Fantastic Planet. Except that, being of Lewis’ mind, is more pious and chaste. But the strange, oversized aliens, oppressors of the galactic territory that the protagonists discover, are so fresh and interesting, that of course the mind wanders and clings.

I love tone-pieces that expand my palette.

This is the cover that I remember.

out of the silent planet cs lewis

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