Lewis hoped, in this novel, to present an appealing imaginative alternative.

… had been dismayed to discover that, for some of his own students, such Utopian fantasies had supplanted both Christian realism and Christian hope. Wells ‘ s anti-imperialist First Men in the Moon (1901)… Lewis took his scaffolding from this tale, borrowing from more than a few details of setting and plot, but the edifice he built upon it was altogether different for he had conceived, by reading David Lindsay ‘ s A Voyage to Arcturus, that the planetary romance could be a vehicle for profound ‘spiritual adventures.’ He thought he could use this form to counter the materialistic picture of the universe that dominated popular science writing. The model for Out of the Silent Planet (1938) was a childhood favorite of Lewis’s: H.G. In The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, Philip and Carol Zaleski note that Lewis’ intention in writing Out of the Silent Planet, first book in the trilogy, was indeed to counter the secularism of his time and infuse a genre he loved with “spiritual adventures.” In fact, one of Lewis’ motivations for writing the Trilogy was in response to what he perceived the lack of “Christian realism and Christian hope” in then-contemporary sci-fi and fantasy.

Although the Space Trilogy is not the most spiritually explicit of Lewis’ fiction - that would probably go to The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, or Narnia - there is nevertheless plenty of overt “Christian” ideas to be found in the Trilogy. The inclusion of biblical imagery and ideas is the most obvious. It’s only reasonable for Christian authors to want to reclaim their literary heritage. But is this a fair comparison? Lewis’ Space Trilogy is often viewed as one of the earliest and best examples of what “Christian speculative fiction” could look like.

Lewis space trilogy