I
was looking around the internet and found George Orwell's brief but fascinating
review of That Hideous Strength, a dystopian novel by C.S. Lewis. Orwell
is convinced by the basic premise of the book:
A
company of mad scientists – or, perhaps, they are not mad, but have merely
destroyed in themselves all human feeling, all notion of good and evil – are
plotting to conquer Britain, then the whole planet, and then other planets,
until they have brought the universe under their control.
All
superfluous life is to be wiped out, all natural forces tamed, the common
people are to be used as slaves and vivisection subjects by the ruling caste of
scientists, who even see their way to conferring immortal life upon themselves.
According to Orwell, “There is nothing outrageously
improbable in such a conspiracy,” adding that he
“could
recommend this book unreservedly” but for the fact the supernatural element in
the story “keeps breaking in, and it does so in rather confusing, undisciplined
ways.” Orwell concludes:
[Lewis] is
entitled to his beliefs, but they weaken his story, not only because they
offend the average reader’s sense of probability but because in effect they
decide the issue in advance. When one is told that God and the Devil are in
conflict one always knows which side is going to win. The whole drama of the
struggle against evil lies in the fact that one does not have supernatural aid.
These are
terrific lines. Indeed, Orwell’s statements regarding the material and worldly
nature of the “struggle against evil” shimmers, or so it seems to me, with a
luminescence that is itself weirdly eerie.