Lewis and Lovecraft

This post is about a common thread I've noticed in the works of two very different writers: Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Clive Staples Lewis. (One of their few similiarities is that both are known by their first two initials.)

C.S. Lewis, of course, is famous as the author of the Narnia series and numerous works of Christian popular theology and apologetics. However, between 1938 and 1945 he wrote a trio of science fiction novels, known generally as his "Space Trilogy." In the first, Out of the Silent Planet, an Oxford linguist named Ransom is kidnapped to Mars by an arrogant scientist named Weston who has constructed a spaceship, and a greedy upper-class bounder named Devine, who wants to get rich off the project. On Mars Ransom meets several species of Martians and finally has an interview with the ruler of the planet, Oyarsa (later on we learn that's a title rather than a name). Oyarsa explains that Earth is called "the silent planet" because its ruling spirit has rebelled against the Creator, and the planet is a kind of celestial pariah state.

The second, Perelandra, takes Ransom to Venus where he faces off against Weston, who is acting as the Serpent in a new Garden of Eden, trying to tempt the first sentient beings on Venus into falling from grace the way humans did on Earth. Eventually Ransom realizes Weston is the vessel for a demonic intelligence, and the two men battle across the surface of the planet and through a nightmarish underworld.

The final novel, That Hideous Strength, blends three strands. It chronicles the crumbling marriage of Mark and Jane Studdock, two academics at fictional Bracton College; it tells of a (literally) unholy alliance between materialist science and demonic evil; and it depicts a major battle between the forces of cosmic good and the evil power controlling Earth.

Some readers don't classify Lewis's trilogy as science fiction, since it has God and angels and Satan and demons in it. When I first read it forty years ago I probably would have agreed, but now I see it as a sincere attempt to write science fiction in an explicitly Christian universe. Surely if we can suspend our disbelief for faster-than-light travel or psionic powers we should be able to imagine a universe where God is real.

H.P. Lovecraft's work is probably more familiar to science fiction fans, so I won't summarize his stories. Suffice to say that he reinvented the horror genre by jettisoning the old paraphenalia of ghosts, vampires, and family curses, substituting his own mythology of ancient alien species, cosmic entities as powerful as gods but lacking any compassion for mere humans, and beings so alien that humans are driven mad by the sight of them.

I don't know if either man read the other's work. Lovecraft died before Lewis published any of his fantasy or science fiction, so it's doubtful that HPL ever heard of C.S. Lewis. But Lewis did read a fair amount of popular literature in his own day, so it's at least possible that he ran across some Lovecraft stories in anthologies or magazine reprints. "The Colour Out of Space" or "The Dunwich Horror" are the most likely candidates. If some scholar of Lewisiana knows of any record of Lewis reading Lovecraft I'd love to hear of it.

Now that I've gotten all that introducing out of the way, here's the thread I've become aware of in their work. Both Lewis's Space Trilogy and the bulk of Lovecraft's work were attempts to grapple with the notion of humanity's place in the universe as revealed by 20th-Century science: a place inconceivably vast, ancient, and hostile to humanity.

For Lovecraft, informed by Neitszchean pessimism, the primary reaction to that vision of the universe was fear. In all of his greatest stories, the horror is simply the crushing reality — suitably reified in monstrous form — that humans aren't the pinnacle of creation, aren't the center of God's attention, aren't the hub of the universe. We're not even the masters of the Earth, really.

"The Shadow Out of Time" shows that humans are ephemeral, doomed to be replaced by beetles. "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" suggests that our control of the Earth is limited to the dry land bits, and a vaster civilization waits patiently under the sea. "The Colour Out of Space" paints a vivid picture of just how alien the universe beyond the sky may be. And At The Mountains of Madness reveals we were created accidentally by ancient plant-beings from space.

What's interesting is that Lewis, the Christian convert "surprised by joy" as he put it in the title of his autobiography, reaches many of the same conclusions as grim atheistical Lovecraft, in the Space Trilogy.

Humans aren't the pinnacle of creation in Lewis's trilogy. In Perelandra it's pretty explicit that the children of Venus will be the ones to fill the role that humans on Earth failed to achieve. They will be the bridge between mortal and divine, and part of their task will be the rescue of humanity from our "silent planet" occupied by evil. Humans will be supporting cast in the Venusian epic.

Nor, for Lewis, are human concerns especially important. As Tor — the "Adam" of Venus — explains to Ransom, the biblical Apocalypse and the "end of the world" is supposed to be a new beginning — the correction of a trivial mistake before humans and Venusians can get started on the real divine plan. All our history, even the Incarnation of Christ and the Crucifixion, are a footnote.

Lewis can even create some pretty Lovecraftian beings. It's notable that they aren't the demon-possessed villains, or even the giant creepy-crawly which makes a brief onstage appearance in Perelandra. No, it's the angels. There's one scene in which the tutelary spirits of Mars and Venus ask Ransom's help in choosing appropriate forms for them to take as they pay homage to the Adam and Eve of Venus. Their first couple of attempts overwhelm Ransom's senses and shake his sanity because his brain simply cannot comprehend them. And in That Hideous Strength the invisible presence of an angel distorts the spatial perceptions of humans nearby. Since the angels impose their own absolute frame of reference on their surroundings, humans suddenly become aware that they're standing on the surface of a spinning ball whirling around the Sun.

In the other direction, Lovecraft's Fungi From Yuggoth from "The Whisperer in Darkness" could almost be Lewisian examples of the future of a fallen, demon-ruled species obsessed with material power and scientific knowledge. Weston or the scientists of N.I.C.E. would find them very congenial, and consider their habit of carrying brains around in metal jars a clever idea.

Interestingly, both men also appreciate the creepiness of stupidity: Lovecraft's ultimate Elder God is the "blind idiot" Azathoth. While in Perelandra the demon possessing Weston only uses intelligence as a tool, reverting to mindless malevolence when there's no advantage to be gained by argument.

But of course despite these similarities, I don't think anyone else has ever used the adjective "Lovecraftian" to describe Lewis's work. And the reason, of course, is the infinitely big elephant in the room: God.

Lovecraft was a diehard atheist. For him, humanity and the fate of the Earth really were irrelevant in the cosmic scheme of things. There is no resurrection after death, no afterlife. Fame is fleeting, as is civilization. Nothing matters. Hence his reaction of horror.

By contrast Lewis — after a difficult and reluctant conversion from unbelief to devout Christianity — could take comfort in the idea of an infinitely compassionate God. So that even in a vast and ancient universe the inhabitants of one fallen world are still worthy of His aid. There is a purpose to it all, somehow, even if that purpose is far too big for a mere human mind to understand. We may not be the center of the universe, but something is, and our mayfly lives do matter to somebody.

Personally I'm more in line with Lovecraft than Lewis. I lack belief. But as I've grown older I've come to realize that it is a lack. Feeling smug and superior to mere believers is at best immature, and is certainly without any foundation in fact. Atheists have managed to beat all religions quite handily in the realm of bloodshed and oppression, but I haven't seen them produce anything to match Chartres Cathedral or Mozart's Requiem. In an irony that even Lovecraft might have found amusing, it may turn out that unbelief is not an "adaptive strategy" as the biologists would say, and that brute Darwinian selection will favor the believers.

Comparing the works of Lewis and Lovecraft does make me wonder what the two men might have made of each other, had they somehow met or exchanged letters. I have no doubt that the Anglophile Lovecraft would have been vastly impressed by a real live Oxford don, even if he wasn't convinced by Lewis's religious arguments. I'm less sure that Lewis would have had much patience with Lovecraft. Pedantic self-taught know-it-alls can be rather tiresome (or so I'm told). At the very least the two of them could have shared a laugh at the false piety and boosterism of some of Lovecraft's ghost-writing clients.

 

For a look at my own take on demons and people who traffick with them, check out The Initiate, on sale next week!