Unabridged Chick

I'm Audra, a 30-something married lesbian. I love interesting heroines, gorgeous prose, place as character, and the occasional werewolf.
Out of the Silent Planet - C.S. Lewis I have a thing for science fiction written by authors not known for sci-fi, like Doris Lessing, and so even though I haven't read much Lewis (none of his Narnia books, can you believe it?!), I had to say yes on this one. I will say straight out that I'm a science dummy, so sci-fi can be hit or miss for me, depending on whether I can 'get' the science. Happily, in this case, the science is sort of fuzzy, and the going to Mars is just a device to talk about souls, humanity, awareness, and other brainier topics I can handle.This was a zippy read, not only because it's brief -- about 180ish pages, depending on your e-reader -- but also because the story moves rather quickly. Originally published in 1938, this story has that earnest feel of vintage sci-fi and science pulp -- lots of action, grand landscapes and pragmatically cruel villains -- but with a deep philosophical vein that makes the story meaty. It's no secret Lewis incorporates aspects of his Christian theology in to his fiction, and normally I'm pretty allergic to any and all 'inspiration' in my reading, but in this case, the religiosity is pretty low-grade and for me, inoffensive. There's some colonialism in the story as the characters deride or admire the beings on Mars (or, as called in the book, Malacandra), and aspire toward enslavement or liberation of the beings. It's both typical yet satisfying, the tropes that show up, and this really is a stereotypical 'first contact' type of lark, with a little more braininess than one might expect.There's a Postscript to the story, a letter from Ransom (the fictional 'hero', of sorts) to C.S. Lewis, which made me laugh only because it was so...fussy. Ransom is giving Lewis critiques of the manuscript, and as a result, Lewis-by-way-of-Ransom includes a number of mundane facts and additional details for the practical-minded reader. But there's also a secondary discussion of 'memoir' (as this novel is pretending to be) and how one can't always convey the 'truth' of an event to the reader, despite a plethora of facts.Of course you are right; if we are to treat it as a story you must telescope the time I spent in the village during which "nothing happened". But I grudge it. Those quiet weeks, the mere living among the hrossa, are to me the main thing that happened. I know them, Lewis; that's what you can't get into a mere story. For instance, because I always take a thermometer with me on a holiday (it has saved many a one from being spoiled) I know that the normal temperature of a hross is 103 degrees. I know -- though I can't remember learning it -- that they live about 80 Martian years, or 160 earth years; that they marry at about 20 (=40); ... that they do get (as you would say) "elevated" but not drunk on a gaudy night -- of which they have many. But what can one do with these scraps of information? I merely analyze them out of a whole living memory that can never be put into words, and no one in this world will be able to build up from such scraps quite the right picture.On the whole, a readable sci-fi, especially for anyone intimidated by the genre. It's a story of exploration, of valuing others, the cruel and stupid way humans behave, and a vintage look at space travel from the 1930s. (I'm too lazy to look it up, but apparently Lewis was something like the fifth or sixth person to use the word 'spaceship' for the vehicle that took his characters to Mars.)