The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - August 29, 2026


PREVIEW： Chronicles #61 ｜ Perelandra with Nick Dixon


Episode Stats


Length

27 minutes

Words per minute

179.0

Word count

4,980

Sentence count

306

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome back to Chronicles, where today we're going to be talking all about
00:00:17.560 Perilandra by C.S. Lewis, carrying on now with the second novel of the Ransom trilogy.
00:00:24.220 So I'm pleased to be once again joined by Nick to continue the good work.
00:00:28.480 Good to be back.
00:00:29.260 Yeah, you were here for Out of the Silent Planet and people really enjoyed that.
00:00:33.820 So it's wonderful to have you back, Nick.
00:00:35.180 Oh, it's good to be here.
00:00:35.840 Yeah, that was a while ago because there was illness, there was tube strikes.
00:00:39.200 It was annoying.
00:00:39.920 The delays.
00:00:40.280 It was tube strikes, wasn't it?
00:00:42.240 Yeah.
00:00:42.680 We were meant to do this ages ago, but it'll still be good.
00:00:44.960 I read them all.
00:00:46.100 I was like, let's do them.
00:00:47.140 There's been a slight delay, but hopefully worth doing because this is a great book.
00:00:50.940 And it's even better, most people would say, than Out of the Silent Planet.
00:00:53.860 I would agree with this.
00:00:55.200 I would agree with this.
00:00:56.360 One of the things that I loved so much about Out of the Silent Planet was the fact that
00:01:02.620 C.S. Lewis entirely surprised me because I entirely bought into Ransom's expectations
00:01:09.560 of what he would find on Malacandra, which, you know, just a planet of alien life and
00:01:16.440 danger and death.
00:01:18.440 And it wasn't like that at all.
00:01:20.460 What you find from Out of the Silent Planet is that Earth is the outlier.
00:01:26.100 Earth is a strange one in all of this.
00:01:28.920 Earth is the silent planet.
00:01:31.880 And the reason it's silent is because it's cut off from the heavens.
00:01:37.040 It's cut off from the field of Abel, as it's termed in this,
00:01:40.900 where you can hear and have communion with God, with Meleldil,
00:01:46.560 much more honestly, because it's being corrupted by the devil,
00:01:50.660 the bent one, from the beginning of the fall. 0.63
00:01:52.880 And this obviously comes down to Peralandra.
00:01:58.100 And so one of the things that I loved so much about it was that after reading the first novel,
00:02:04.200 I expected Ransom to come to this new planet, would be introduced to all these different types of alien races again,
00:02:11.180 but they'd be different but the same.
00:02:13.020 And it's not that at all.
00:02:14.740 At all. And because of the way that Lewis writes it, the stakes in this story are so much higher than anything in the first novel.
00:02:26.220 Yeah, it's very different. It's less conventional sci-fi.
00:02:29.360 Not that the last one was that conventional, but it's less conventional and it moves into the more the theological and the imaginative.
00:02:36.120 Lewis himself, in an essay about the six subspecies of sci-fi, talks about the change he made.
00:02:41.760 He said, I once took a character to Mars in a spaceship,
00:02:44.420 but then I realized it was much better to take them to Venus via an angel.
00:02:48.280 So he doesn't even bother with spaceships anymore.
00:02:50.180 He's in some new realm here.
00:02:52.040 Because there's all these different types of science fiction.
00:02:54.200 He's very against the displaced person,
00:02:56.840 which he says is just a domestic story, like a love story,
00:03:00.600 and you just moved it to another planet. 0.98
00:03:02.140 He thinks that's rubbish. 0.97
00:03:03.240 Right, I see. 0.88
00:03:03.800 And then he goes to engineer sci-fi, where he's like,
00:03:06.420 maybe good, but I'm not an expert.
00:03:08.000 He doesn't really have an opinion, which is like Jules Verne,
00:03:10.060 things how they might actually work, how you might actually get under the sea or to the moon or
00:03:14.740 something. He's much more in this imaginative tradition, which Perilandra falls under. So
00:03:21.980 it's not that conventional sci-fi. I'd be almost worried, recommend it to someone who loves science
00:03:27.180 fiction. They may or may not like it, but if they like great writing and great novels, they will
00:03:30.820 love it. And it was Tolkien's favourite, and I believe his daughter's favourite. So good taste.
00:03:35.400 Yeah. Well, I can certainly see why. So it picks up very organically. So we start the story with Lewis, an Oxford scholar and friend of the protagonist of the first novel, Elwyn Ransom.
00:03:51.340 And it begins with him on a walk along the country road after getting to Worcester train station, because he's going to go to meet Ransom.
00:04:01.160 because Ransom has asked if he can pop up for the weekend to discuss business.
00:04:06.340 And Lewis knows exactly what this means.
00:04:09.400 He means it's going to have to be something relating to Ransom's experiences up on Malacandra 0.78
00:04:16.760 and this sort of high destiny that now surrounds him as a result of meeting the Oyasa, 0.61
00:04:22.780 meeting something that's essentially like the guardian of Mars.
00:04:27.840 one of the things that I love so much about this original first chapter is the fact that you really
00:04:34.220 get into Lewis's head and you get inside of the head of a character who hasn't experienced
00:04:39.640 what Ransom has experienced out there. In fact, only a few very, very trusted friends
00:04:47.340 Ransom has actually told about what happened up there, of course, because you go talking to the
00:04:53.860 you'd immediately look like a loony, and no one would believe you. 0.52
00:04:57.860 Yeah, so Lewis comes in at the very end of Out of the Silent Planet as a character, doesn't he?
00:05:01.860 And he's here more as a character because he's actually moving around in the action now.
00:05:05.860 In the end of that, he's really just in communication with Ransom via letters.
00:05:09.860 Something strikes me, maybe this is an inconsistency, I need to check this,
00:05:12.860 but doesn't he say at the end of Out of the Silent Planet that Ransom is a shootin' him?
00:05:17.860 Yes, he does.
00:05:18.860 But then in this book, there's a part where he says, you're called Ransom for a reason.
00:05:22.860 Yeah, so that might be an inconsistent. Knowing Lewis, that might just be a mistake because he's known for doing those because he was so prolific.
00:05:29.780 And unlike Tolkien, he wasn't that meticulous about it.
00:05:32.560 Yeah, there was another moment actually really early on where I thought, is that something of a retcon?
00:05:38.460 Which is where Ransom is explaining to Lewis that he's going to get sent on to Peralandra now on the orders of the Oyasa. 0.88
00:05:47.760 So he's going to go to Venus.
00:05:49.640 And he talks about the fact that it's like, oh, well, I speak old solar.
00:05:52.860 and so this will be fine." And Lewis says to him,
00:05:55.820 but I thought that that was the language of Malacandra.
00:05:59.260 It's like, well, yes, it was one of them.
00:06:01.100 It's the oldest of those languages, but the other two languages...
00:06:04.140 And you're like, okay, this is a bit like, you know,
00:06:07.340 like just basically so that Ransom doesn't have to go through the process
00:06:11.420 of learning a new language again in the story.
00:06:13.740 He was already, yeah, you can allow these little things.
00:06:16.300 He was already suspiciously good in the last one, wasn't he?
00:06:18.460 Yeah.
00:06:18.780 Okay, he's a philologist, but like he was immediately communicating
00:06:22.220 this bizarre language. With the fiffle triggy. And the harossa, it's like, you seem pretty good at
00:06:27.660 this language, yeah, because that kind of thing will ruin it if you get too hung up on those sort
00:06:31.420 of things. Lewis, you know, he started Narnia not really thinking it was going to be a series or
00:06:36.540 anything. I think he initially threw it in the bin and someone said, his friend said, no, no,
00:06:40.220 this is actually good, because Tolkien didn't like them, you know, in the meetings. And so
00:06:44.700 then he obviously ends up doing seven of them, but he had to make up some of that as it went along.
00:06:49.180 And he made up Magician's Nephew later,
00:06:51.740 which is a kind of prequel to Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
00:06:54.580 But Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe doesn't actually make sense
00:06:56.680 if you think about Magician's Nephew
00:06:58.720 because then they already know Aslan,
00:07:01.220 whereas they make it sound like they really don't know much about it.
00:07:03.840 When you say they, who do you?
00:07:05.700 Well, yeah, it's a bit tricky because the Professor character
00:07:08.600 already has been...
00:07:10.200 Oh, Diggory.
00:07:10.640 Yeah, has already been.
00:07:11.820 And so it's a bit like they talk about everything's spoken about
00:07:14.920 in Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe like it's new,
00:07:16.280 but they really already know about...
00:07:18.360 you know, it's kind of questionable.
00:07:19.720 I see what you mean.
00:07:20.480 Yeah.
00:07:20.720 Yeah.
00:07:20.960 So, but Lewis, he was like this.
00:07:22.840 He was the opposite of Tolkien.
00:07:24.000 Tolkien's like, right,
00:07:24.800 this one has to make sense
00:07:25.780 the entire histories.
00:07:27.420 Lewis was like,
00:07:27.880 oh, there's a fawn
00:07:28.680 and there's Father Christmas.
00:07:29.840 What do you want from me?
00:07:30.540 You know?
00:07:31.660 But I, as I said,
00:07:33.160 I actually prefer Lewis's fiction,
00:07:34.560 which is sort of quasi-blasphemous.
00:07:36.820 But anyway,
00:07:37.260 anyway, I don't want to derail it.
00:07:38.500 So we start with Lewis
00:07:40.100 as a character in this one,
00:07:41.640 helping Ransom to get to Venus.
00:07:43.740 Before we get there, though,
00:07:45.120 there's just one part
00:07:46.540 where he's walking down this country
00:07:48.340 road and already he doesn't really want to be there right and he's saying to himself oh well
00:07:55.080 it's going to be you know i'm just so busy there are other things that i could really be doing
00:08:00.540 right now and then as he just begins to scratch further and further down his conscience it's like
00:08:05.640 no you're afraid yeah that's why you're actually because you're afraid of being drawn in and
00:08:12.820 there's this wonderful extensive passage about how you just get drawn into things whether it's
00:08:17.680 a political party or a social club or whatever it may be.
00:08:22.720 And just that apprehension that is our nature as human beings
00:08:26.480 to just take the first step that drags you into something
00:08:31.520 where all of a sudden you're like, right, this is what I have to do now.
00:08:35.920 Now that I've committed to it, that first step, I have to see this through.
00:08:41.480 And this is what Lewis is really anxious about.
00:08:43.760 he's anxious about now this suddenly being, because of his friendship with Ransom,
00:08:49.280 a life commitment that he's also going to have to hold himself to.
00:08:53.680 Yeah, and beyond that, I believe he's actually demonically attacked on the way the implication is.
00:08:58.000 Little does he know it at the time.
00:08:59.760 Yeah, because Ransom basically says something about it, didn't you feel that or something?
00:09:03.120 And he's like, oh right, he's getting all these different voices.
00:09:05.520 Yeah, I thought I was just being...
00:09:06.880 Negative.
00:09:07.440 Yeah, but it's like, no, no, you were under attack from dark forces.
00:09:11.360 Yeah.
00:09:11.760 Yeah. And so Lewis goes to Ransom's house after he's left his bag on the train.
00:09:18.480 It's already a terrible weekend and they get into the house and this is where it's all pitch black.
00:09:25.360 Ransom's not home yet. He's left a note saying that he had to go and do something at Cambridge
00:09:30.000 and he'll be back later in the evening. And this is where, as Lewis is fumbling out in the dark,
00:09:35.600 he happens upon the Oyasa of Mars, just there in the room. And he has this first encounter
00:09:45.120 with something that is unfathomable to him. I mean, Zhenyung is so ancient and as the Oyasa said
00:09:54.720 to Ransom back at the end of the first one, it's like, well, I'm not here in the same way that you
00:10:01.040 are here. And even though there is a voice, but as we find out later...
00:10:07.840 Sort of a light, a vague light.
00:10:09.200 Yeah, and a vague light. And so everything, it just comes across as somewhat gothic and
00:10:14.400 really supernatural. And you just buy into Lewis's anxieties about all of this. But obviously once
00:10:20.080 Ransom comes back, Ransom's perfectly chipper and just begins to explain things very methodically to
00:10:26.640 him and it's really interesting just at the beginning here because ransom grows so much
00:10:33.680 over the course of this novel but but it's self-evident just from the moment that he's
00:10:38.800 introduced here how much his experiences in the first novel also changed him as well you know
00:10:46.400 because he started out as someone who was just accidentally brought to mars by weston and devine
00:10:53.660 And then as a result of that, encountered the divine
00:10:57.140 and became in touch with the field of Arbol and Meleldil's will,
00:11:02.780 even though he was already a Christian,
00:11:04.500 but in ways that he could never have even conceived of.
00:11:07.540 Whereas now you see him as someone dedicated to this task that has been given.
00:11:13.000 The Oyasa has told him,
00:11:14.940 I need you to go to Venus, to Perelandra, on a mission.
00:11:20.000 Ransom has no idea what this is.
00:11:21.760 he doesn't actually have any inkling as to what is expected of him,
00:11:26.320 but he's still going to do it.
00:11:28.520 And he's going to put his faith in whatever the divine decree is
00:11:34.140 that has been laid out before him.
00:11:35.920 Yeah, he was a total everyman naive at the start of the first one, I suppose.
00:11:40.560 He has grown.
00:11:41.560 He's sort of more of a heroic character by this stage,
00:11:43.680 and it'd have to be for the tasks he has to do in this.
00:11:46.220 Yes.
00:11:46.800 And then by the third one, which one we may get onto,
00:11:50.040 to he's become a completely different character again
00:11:52.400 to the point where Lewis has to introduce
00:11:53.980 a new Everyman character as the protagonist.
00:11:56.500 Because it wouldn't work anymore.
00:11:59.740 But yeah, so in this,
00:12:00.740 I'd say he's somewhat between an Everyman and Heroic.
00:12:03.240 He still has a new challenge, 0.99
00:12:04.440 but he's not completely green like he was in the first one. 0.90
00:12:07.720 No, and what he needs of Lewis,
00:12:09.680 the reason for Lewis needing to come up on business
00:12:12.060 is he says that,
00:12:14.820 well, I'm going to be sent away
00:12:16.700 in this magical flying coffin
00:12:19.440 that's been prepared for me.
00:12:21.200 Which is an interesting choice, isn't it?
00:12:22.320 I mean, is it about resurrection?
00:12:24.520 The choice of the coffin is quite interesting.
00:12:27.320 I didn't totally decide on what the symbolism of it was, really.
00:12:30.940 There's different ideas.
00:12:32.260 Yeah, it's very enigmatic.
00:12:35.420 And it doesn't...
00:12:36.560 Because there are many things in here
00:12:38.200 where if there is a slight chance of ambiguity,
00:12:41.940 especially when we get into later on
00:12:43.800 where we go into the really rich philosophical
00:12:46.120 and theological conversations,
00:12:48.900 Lewis does a very good job of just keeping the guard railings there
00:12:52.000 so you understand exactly what the point he's trying to make is
00:12:55.360 and exactly what he means.
00:12:56.920 But in terms of some of the more visual aspects of this novel,
00:13:00.980 yeah, there's definitely a room for ambiguous metaphor.
00:13:05.140 Is it an analogy with Christ, the fact that he goes in his coffin
00:13:08.800 and then comes out of it and is sort of, in a sense, resurrected?
00:13:12.020 Born again.
00:13:12.680 I wonder, yeah.
00:13:14.160 Not sure, but it's an interesting method of...
00:13:17.280 He was less concerned with all the trouble of the spaceship.
00:13:20.020 He'd just stick him in the coffin, we'll transport him. 0.95
00:13:21.840 Naked. 1.00
00:13:22.640 Yeah, naked.
00:13:23.720 And so he just says to him, look, I'm going to be going away.
00:13:27.380 I don't know how long, but get me a doctor
00:13:30.720 just in case I need one when I get back.
00:13:35.560 And so Ransom gets into the coffin 0.75
00:13:37.520 and the Oyasa whisks him away to Perelandra.
00:13:42.300 And as opposed to following Ransom, we actually stay with Lewis and the Doctor Humphreys, who is just enlisted as well, to help with this.
00:13:53.820 And a year later, Ransom returns and comes out of the coffin again.
00:13:59.700 And he's covered in all of these, you know, obviously alien flowers.
00:14:04.540 And once again, he's totally naked.
00:14:07.380 But unlike when he left,
00:14:09.760 Lewis remarks on the fact that he looks 10 years younger,
00:14:13.120 remarkably more buff,
00:14:16.000 and, you know, Ransom's jacked all of a sudden.
00:14:18.600 But with an injury to his heel.
00:14:20.500 To his heel, yes, which just keeps hemorrhaging.
00:14:23.460 It will not stop bleeding.
00:14:26.040 And that was very interesting.
00:14:27.620 So you're left with these puzzle pieces.
00:14:30.320 You see the changed man.
00:14:32.380 And then we go back to Ransom's account
00:14:35.540 and we figure out how all of this came to be.
00:14:38.440 Yes, and the heel, I don't know if we want to talk about it now or later,
00:14:40.900 but it probably pertains to Genesis 3.15.
00:14:45.120 I may as well say it now. 1.00
00:14:46.040 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman 1.00
00:14:48.100 and between thy seed and her seed. 0.99
00:14:50.000 It shall bruise thy heel and thou shalt bruise his heel.
00:14:53.060 But it also mirrors the mythological Fisher King from Celtic legend
00:14:56.960 representing a sacred sacrificial wounding linked to the health of a realm.
00:15:00.600 So it's a sort of sacrificial wound with possible biblical, possible pagan connotations.
00:15:06.740 For the realm of Perilandra that he put himself in the way, yeah, for that.
00:15:12.220 And so he comes to Perilandra, and once again,
00:15:15.400 it's a fantastic way that Lewis immediately provides you with something entirely new.
00:15:21.380 Because whereas on Malacandra, you have these great dipping canyons and gorges
00:15:26.520 and vast high mountains, and it being a place of hard rock and solid land, what we get here
00:15:35.320 is the total opposite of that. We get something like a water world, like Kamino in Attack of the
00:15:41.480 Clones. And in fact, I've got a description of it here. I'll just say while you're doing that,
00:15:47.560 Lewis just happened to have heard an essay on this recently in his science fiction essay.
00:15:51.960 He said he thinks he already knew by the time he wrote that that there were telescopes that
00:15:56.200 that could show there weren't canals on Mars,
00:15:57.980 but he wasn't too bothered.
00:15:59.300 So I had a friend who said he struggled with these books
00:16:01.280 because we already know the heavens wasn't like that.
00:16:04.020 You know, we know now, sorry,
00:16:05.560 the planets aren't, as Lewis said.
00:16:07.060 It's like, I never thought that's really a problem.
00:16:09.060 No, I...
00:16:09.480 You know, it's not, we don't have to be too literal.
00:16:11.880 Yeah.
00:16:12.560 Lewis wasn't even bothered at the time.
00:16:13.900 Okay, Mars isn't like this, so what?
00:16:15.760 Yeah.
00:16:16.280 But anyway.
00:16:16.740 My story is like this.
00:16:18.040 Yeah, exactly.
00:16:18.360 And it's a story.
00:16:19.320 And pair lines, as you say, very different.
00:16:20.580 So yeah, go ahead with the description.
00:16:22.140 It says,
00:16:22.460 His first impression was of nothing more definite than of something slanted, as though he was looking
00:16:28.640 at a photograph which had been taken when the camera was not held level. And even this lasted
00:16:33.900 only for an instant. The slant was replaced by a different slant. Then two slants rushed together
00:16:39.680 and made a peak, and the peak flattened suddenly into a horizontal line, and the horizontal line
00:16:45.680 tilted and became the edge of a vast gleaming slope, which rushed furiously towards him. At the
00:16:52.600 same moment, he felt that he was being lifted. Up and up, he soared, till it seemed as if he must
00:16:59.520 reach the burning dome of gold that hung above him instead of the sky. And I'll just fast forward
00:17:06.060 a bit to where it says, there was no land in sight. The sky was pure flat gold, like the
00:17:12.680 background of a medieval picture it looked very distant as far off as a circus cloud looks from
00:17:19.480 earth the ocean was gold too in the offing flecked with innumerable shadows the nearer waves though
00:17:26.940 golden where their summits caught the light were green on their slopes first emerald and lower
00:17:32.580 down the lustrous bottle green deepening to blue where they passed beneath the shadow of other
00:17:38.840 waves. Just glorious imagery. I really love how he describes the environments and nature and all of
00:17:47.080 the actual landscapes that he constantly puts Ransom into. And so you get this remarkable
00:17:52.360 geology to Peralandra, where the entirety of its landmass is just covered by water.
00:18:01.120 And there are pockets of land, but even these are not land as we would conceive of them.
00:18:07.520 they're almost like joined together rafts of vegetation
00:18:11.940 on which other landmasses and plumage and wilderness thrive.
00:18:16.400 But ultimately, these islands exist almost like,
00:18:20.020 I think he describes them almost as if the core of the earth is a ball,
00:18:23.900 as if there were other balls on top of it
00:18:25.940 and they were just constantly rolling around on the top of the surface.
00:18:30.220 But there is one fixed land in the entire place,
00:18:34.140 which we'll obviously explore a bit later.
00:18:36.340 Yeah, right, because that's very significant.
00:18:38.060 Yeah, it's mainly floating islands with some fixed land.
00:18:40.500 And I don't know if you were going to mention things like the fruits,
00:18:42.980 but he talks at length about these extraordinary fruits
00:18:45.240 and all the vegetation,
00:18:47.360 and you can basically eat virtually everything in the place.
00:18:50.860 And one thing I noted about the fruit was you never want to binge on it.
00:18:54.560 I think it's the fruit he's talking about.
00:18:56.740 It's kind of like a juice, like a gourd, or it's like a juice, whatever.
00:19:00.440 He eats it, and it's so good.
00:19:03.480 He thinks he'd want to do it again, but he doesn't.
00:19:05.960 And that's because he's on Perilandra where one doesn't have these impulses.
00:19:10.000 You just have the right amount of appetite, the appropriate amount.
00:19:12.720 And it reminded me of the Harasa in the first book when we're talking about their attitude towards procreation.
00:19:18.480 Where they procreate and that's it. 0.74
00:19:20.640 They don't have any desire to have endless sex.
00:19:23.400 And Ransom was trying to understand that.
00:19:25.400 It's because they're unfallen.
00:19:26.920 So in this unfallen state, you don't want to gorge yourself on food and be a glutton.
00:19:33.120 You naturally only want to eat the appropriate amount.
00:19:35.240 There's no temptation to have more than you need.
00:19:38.840 Yeah, definitely.
00:19:40.080 And also as well, the wildlife that's described around it as well.
00:19:45.060 So you've got like these, I think it was like, yeah, there was this dragon.
00:19:49.520 There's immediately a small dragon.
00:19:51.080 Yeah.
00:19:51.440 Like, is that going to be a massive part of it?
00:19:53.140 But not really.
00:19:53.940 No.
00:19:54.260 It's just there.
00:19:55.180 It's just one of the creatures.
00:19:56.280 So he describes it as being like the size of a border collier or something like that.
00:20:02.140 Just like this dog-sized little dragon.
00:20:04.780 And Ransom tries to speak to it in Old Sola.
00:20:07.600 And he talks about the fact that he comes in peace and everything.
00:20:10.380 And this dragon just follows him around for a little bit.
00:20:13.700 But there's just obviously these remarkable fish-like creatures in the sea as well.
00:20:19.620 And Ransom begins to query.
00:20:21.940 You get all sorts as well, animals in the caves, just a whole abundance of them.
00:20:26.580 Obviously, the pie bulbs as well, which we'll address more when we're introduced to the lady.
00:20:32.140 But you get all of these things, and Ransom begins to understand that because Peralandra is shielded from the bent one so far, it basically exists in a state where a lot of the pagan mythological creatures that mankind understood on Earth exist here in their actual perfected form.
00:21:00.660 And so there's this wonderful element to it where all of these mythological creatures that exist both in pagan myth and in the Bible.
00:21:08.640 I mean, after all, you know, obviously the dragons are biblical creatures as well.
00:21:13.080 I mean, obviously, I know that Satan turns into a dragon in Revelation.
00:21:16.960 But you see all of these animals here that one time a day you thought, well, it's just myth.
00:21:22.840 It's not really anything.
00:21:23.960 Actually, it's all true.
00:21:25.460 in the same way that I suppose in Narnia you encounter centaurs and mermaids and all these
00:21:33.200 sorts of creatures as well. So it's an interesting parallel between the two. Yeah it is interesting
00:21:39.360 and one comment I had about the whole start you say how great the descriptions are. That whole
00:21:44.900 first passage is brilliant to read as are the dialogues with the green lady. You're in this
00:21:49.940 paradise and yet it's not boring because i may have said before but it was on it was um
00:21:53.920 there was this old quote from on on read the motherland who said happiness writes white
00:21:59.220 martin amos was fond of quoting it the idea that it's very hard to write about happiness because
00:22:03.420 it's nothing really goes on much easier to write about problems and drama but lewis does it so well
00:22:08.360 at the start of this you'd think it'd be boring describing it and eden essentially but it isn't
00:22:12.820 well one thing i'll just say is that that what what you're saying certainly seems to be true
00:22:18.500 and it even seems to be true certainly within the field of you know commentary and the stuff that
00:22:24.020 we do i mean you and i both know well enough that um negatively tilted storylines do far better
00:22:32.140 and more people want to click on them than they ever do if you advertise that there's been some
00:22:36.820 good news yeah um people do just seem a bit hardwired that way yeah uh but the other thing
00:22:42.820 as well. Sorry, what was your second point? I was saying that it's hard to write happiness
00:22:49.240 and a paradise. Yeah, sorry, that was it. But as you say, it's absolutely not boring
00:22:55.840 because there is still so much mystery within the story. Ransom's here. Yeah, okay, fine. There
00:23:04.460 seems to be no imminent threats against him. All of the animals are perfectly lax. Nothing's
00:23:11.380 threatening him there seems to be no immediate risk to his person but why is he here yeah yeah
00:23:17.620 what is he doing here where are the other life forms that he's supposed to be interacting with
00:23:23.140 as an ambassador from his own planet and because he wanders vast vast swathes of the planet and
00:23:29.700 there's these uh wonderful passages where it's just um dedicated to him learning to walk yeah
00:23:36.980 On the land masses, on these rafts, they're constantly going up and on top of different waves and everything.
00:23:43.220 And then describing it as basically him having to learn to walk all over again.
00:23:48.980 It's like that. And so you get these ones of him just acclimatizing to a new location.
00:23:54.500 And then, of course, you end up meeting the Green Lady.
00:23:58.020 Right. And that's very mysterious as well, because she's waving at him.
00:24:01.300 And we know it's going to be important, but we don't know who she is.
00:24:03.940 that she's waving, very excited, and then she's very disappointed. Yes, and I wanted to read this
00:24:09.060 as well, because again, it was just fantastic. It says, amidst all this, she stood looking at him,
00:24:16.040 her feet together, her arms hanging at her side, her stare level and unafraid, communicating
00:24:22.460 nothing. Ransom determined to speak, using the old solar tongue. I am from another world,
00:24:29.020 he began, and then stopped. The green lady had done something, for which he was quite unprepared.
00:24:36.120 She raised her arm and pointed at him, not as in menace, but as though inviting the other
00:24:42.100 creatures to behold him. At the same moment, her face changed again, and for a second he thought
00:24:48.020 that she was going to cry. Instead, she burst into laughter, peel upon peel of laughter,
00:24:55.120 until her whole body shook with it till she bent almost double with her hands resting on her knees
00:25:02.420 still laughing and repeatedly pointing at him. The animals like our own dogs in similar circumstances
00:25:09.020 dimly understood that there was merriment afoot. All manner of gamboling, wing clapping, snorting
00:25:16.140 and standing upon hind legs began to be displayed and still the green lady laughed till yet again
00:25:23.400 the waves divided them and she was out of sight ransom was thunderstruck had the old dealer sent 0.99
00:25:30.880 him to meet an idiot or an evil spirit that mocked him or was it after all an hallucination 1.00
00:25:37.480 for this was just how a hallucination might be expected to behave so very underwhelming for 1.00
00:25:44.380 for ransom's first encounter yes and it turns out she finds him funny because he's he looks weird
00:25:50.600 because half of him is tan by the sun and half isn't.
00:25:53.960 And this is why she calls him piebald,
00:25:56.060 because he's a weird patchy mixture.
00:25:57.940 And generally his state looks funny to her.
00:26:00.060 He's been through this journey.
00:26:01.600 She hasn't seen anything like him.
00:26:03.420 She's used to perfect beings, not weird blokes.
00:26:06.120 He describes, doesn't he, when he's in the coffin,
00:26:09.520 when he's being transported,
00:26:10.880 even as he's in some sort of stasis state,
00:26:13.980 that half of his body is warm, is hot,
00:26:17.160 and half of his body is cold.
00:26:18.720 and then yeah as he comes out and he's got this very very uneven suntan um you know she just
00:26:25.800 finds it immediately humorous and she of course herself apart from being all green um is also
00:26:32.080 naked and very importantly apart from her greenness she is actually human physically
00:26:39.900 speaking she looks human she just looks like a green human right and of course this is something
00:26:45.340 that totally catches Ransom off guard, 0.98
00:26:49.220 given that he's just been on a planet of sawns and hrosses and trifle figgies,
00:26:54.840 and now to find a new human here.
00:26:57.700 And so eventually, as he tries to swim to her,
00:27:00.460 the tide brings him back,
00:27:01.720 and eventually they manage to communicate with one another again.
00:27:05.220 And as you say, she explains to him that,
00:27:08.360 well, she was laughing because of his appearance,
00:27:11.540 and also that she now knows that he didn't like that laughter
00:27:16.860 and that now she is older because of it.
00:27:21.440 Yeah, he tries to figure out how, in what sense she's human.
00:27:25.200 And it says, but this creature was not of his race.
00:27:27.300 No windings, however intricate, of any genealogical tree
00:27:30.580 could ever establish a connection between himself and her.
00:27:32.980 In that sense, not one drop in her veins was human.
00:27:35.580 The universe had produced her species and his quite independently.
00:27:39.140 So she sort of is and isn't. She looks the same. 0.96
00:27:41.540 but can't possibly be human in the same sense.
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