Perelandra
Perelandra, second novel in a science-fiction trilogy by C.S. Lewis, published in 1943; some later editions were titled Voyage to Venus. It is a sequel to Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet (1938) and was followed in the trilogy by That Hideous Strength (1945). In a reworking of the biblical story of the temptation of Eve, Perelandra presents the scientist from Out of the Silent Planet, Edward Rolles Weston, as the tempter of the first woman on the planet Perelandra (Venus). Although sometimes criticized as having a sexist view of women, Perelandra nevertheless succeeds as both science fiction and religious allegory.
Elwin Ransom, the middle-aged professor who was taken to Malacandra (Mars) in Out of the Silent Planet, is in this story transported supernaturally to Perelandra in a symbolically coffin-sized box. The journey to Malacandra had involved a death to self that freed him from fear and prepared him for whatever challenges Perelandra has to offer. The descriptions of the world on which Ransom arrives are Lewis’s most impressive imaginative achievement. Ransom finds that Perelandra is totally unlike Malacandra or Thulcandra (Earth). It is a water-covered planet, with flexible inhabitable islands of vegetation and animal life floating on its surface; it is a world full of deep rich colours and amazing smells and tastes; above is a golden dome, caused by a sun shining on the dense opaque atmosphere.
Ransom swims to one of the islands, spends the night there, begins to explore it the next morning, and meets one of the planet’s two sentient inhabitants, a woman with a human form but green skin. He learns that Perelandra is newly inhabited and paradisal, unfallen, equivalent to the earthly Garden of Eden, with this Green Lady as its Eve. Soon afterward he discovers that Weston has reached Perelandra by spaceship. Weston, who has moved on from the interplanetary colonization he was pursuing in Out of the Silent Planet, now espouses the “emergent evolution” associated with French philosopher Henri Bergson and has come to Perelandra with the objective of spreading his new-found faith to that world. He is not aware that diabolical forces have taken possession of his personality and are using him for a different purpose: to tempt the Green Lady and induce her to fall, as the biblical Eve did.
Weston tries three times to persuade the Green Lady to do the one thing forbidden to Perelandrians, spending the night on the Fixed Land, one of the rare solid areas on Perelandra—forbidden because it would allow them to accumulate possessions and to place their trust in materialism instead of in God. Ransom realizes that he was brought to Perelandra to help the Green Lady resist Weston’s attacks on her will. After Weston’s third attempt to persuade her, Ransom recognizes that eventually she will give in if the temptations continue. He therefore must physically assault Weston and kill him, thus destroying the diabolical power’s access to the planet, since it can remain on Perelandra only if it has a human body to inhabit. Ransom battles Weston, who by now has become an “Un-man,” totally possessed by evil, and pursues him across the sea and through deep underground caverns. Ransom is victorious, and the planetary tragedy is averted.
Perelandra, unlike Earth, will continue to be unfallen, obedient, and paradisal, as Lewis believed the Earth would have been if humans had not been disobedient. After Ransom listens to a magnificent litany of adoration and watches a Great Dance celebrating the grandeur and goodness of God and the universe, he is taken back to Thulcandra in a coffinlike container like the one that brought him to Perelandra.