A tiny group of gallant men (and “their women”) go underground to fight the evil gynocratic overlords. Is this the plot of a terrible dystopian potboiler from 1971, or a description of how most MRAs see themselves, and the world, today?
Turns out it’s both. I found this pic in the Blue Pill subreddit, and now I really, really want to read this book.
Here’s a book review from someone who did.
(That was directed at Ann, of course.)
You don’t have to leave. But I should inform you that I secretly hate you.
How on earth did this get from people agreeing that predestination and inescapable one-way routes to Hell are abhorrent ideas to suddenly being picking on Christians in general? That’s sure now how the conversation I was having with Grumpy Old Man was going.
Re the space missionaries – I’m seeing the Muppets doing it, with the theme tune of Pigs In Space, of course.
If we’re going to send a missionary into space I vote for Mog from Spaceballs. He’s his own best friend, after all, and intelligent aliens would probably like dogs a lot better than people.
Well this kind of dissolved fast.
Just realised that Narnia is essentially the Space Jesus scenario, except Aslan is awful.
And Lewis’ space trilogy is literally the Space Jesus scenario.
Actually according to the second book, Jesus only incarnated on Earth, and after this point all new sapient races will be humanish, because fuck diversity in the universe. And don’t get me started on the third one.
In the third one, among other things, C.S. Lewis decided to write a lesbian. It didn’t go well.
And Merlin, I think it says a lot about Lewis’ views that the fact that Merlin thought that a woman using birth control with her husband was worthy of death was given less attention than the fact that he didn’t consider tears shameful, like all Good Christian Men do apparently.
Oh and Eustace Scrubb, god I pitied that character.
0_o
I didn’t get far through the first of the space trilogy. Sounds like I didn’t miss much.
Loved Aslan as a kid – loved most of the series, actually, though that’s partly because of Pauline Baynes’s illustrations.
Forgot to add that I hated The Last Battle, and when it gets to the “and as He [suddenly capitalised] spoke, He no longer looked like a lion” bit, well, that was adding insult to injury. I did not want a deity looking like some boring human, I wanted an animal!
Pauline Baynes! One of the great illustrators of the 20th century. I think she was most in her element doing the neomedieval stuff.
I managed to willfully blind myself to the Christianity in Narnia until someone forceably opened my eyes to it. *sigh*
Lewis I think was an excellent descriptive writer but characters and plot were often where he fall a bit flat for me. Except for Till We Have Faces-problematic as that may have been it’s honestly one of my favourite books period.
His theology I think was pretty wonky, until his wife Joy died he kind of thought that grief and sadness were sinful unless in direct response to a sin.
Farmer Giles of Ham! That was a fun story.
I loved the two pictures of the Hall of Images on Charn, in The Magician’s Nephew. They inspired years of drawing and writing.
gilshalos – so did I, for a while. We had LWW read to us in third grade. I still remember how excited I was when it was revealed Aslan was a lion.
Hmm I first heard LWW at school as well, they’re very good books for reading aloud I find.
If we’re going for allegory of that period, I much prefer ‘Leaf, by Niggle’, one of Tolkien’s other short stories. But then I much prefer Tolkien over Lewis in general.
I loved the Narnia books as a kid, but haven’t read his space stories. I went to Sunday school in the local baptist church back then, everyone read the Narnia books and it was made obvious to me that Aslan is fantasy Jesus. Didn’t have a problem with it at all; as a kid I found it completely reasonable that there’s this big multiverse and Jesus appears in some form or other in each and every universe.
There’s a lot of iffy stuff in these books, but I didn’t realize as a kid. Also, on part of Susan, as we’ve discussed before, my interpretation of why she didn’t get to fantasy heaven was just that she’d convinced herself that Narnia wasn’t real and only the mundane everyday reality counts. I think I was just too literal-minded as a kid to pick up on a lot of the iffy stuff.
I’ve only read the Silmarillion, Hobbit, LotR and Farmer Giles, of Tolkien’s work.
Did anyone here read Alan Garner? I’ve read three of his – The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Moon of Gomrath and Elidor. Didn’t like Elidor when I first read it (Findhorn’s death) but I fell for the first two immediately, not least because they’re set in real places you can find on an Ordnance Survey map.
The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper was another of my favourite series, though I don’t like the end. The protagonist(s) shut out from all the magic or other worlds scenario always pisses me off.
I remember that conversation. I still read it that way; I don’t read anything about sexuality in it, though if I knew more about Lewis I daresay I might. To me it’s just alienation, losing faith, being materialistic, whatever, that he’s talking about.
Whee! I knew I had found my people!
Leaf by Niggle can be read online here – http://heroicjourneys.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/niggle.pdf
I love those by Alan Garner. I’m not so keen on his other books, but those 3, esp the first 2, yes.
As to the Dark is Rising series..there seem to be two versions of the final book. The one I read, and I presumed was the original (since it was the one a friend 20 years older knew as well), the book ends with the mistletoe blooming and the Dark rising :-
‘[i]It was only by simple accident that his feeble had hit the circle of signs hanging from his neck.[/i]
Then the prophecy written out in full.
End of story, though the fact a few lines earlier Will looks back on the events hints they win out. It wasn’t for a decade after I’d read it that I saw a copy of Silver on the Tree in a bookshop with a new cover, picked it up to leaf through it for nostalgic reasons, and found a whole new bit tacked on the end that basically contradicted a lot of what happened before. Simon, Jane and Barney forget everything ?? Bran /doesn’t/ go off with his father, but chooses reality ?? WTFF ???!
There’s a different version????
I MUST KNOW ABOUT THIS
I never looked to see more. I think the only difference is that it ends without the ‘what happned afterwards’ bit
Ann,
The “Asshole atheist” comment Katz made doesn’t imply that all atheists are assholes or unwelcome here. There are a few atheist regulars here. “Asshole atheists” only refers to atheists who are assholes, though I can see where you might have taken it to mean something else. We don’t argue religion or lack of here. If you are looking for a feminist space to discuss atheism on, I recommend most of the blogs at Free Thought Blogs.
Actually, I can’t find any reference to this anywhere online. Maybe there was just a damaged edition where the ending got missed out ? Seems unlikely coincidence, because it was an artistically perfect place to finish the story.