what makes Out of the Silent Planet so special, I believe, is that there is so much of JRR Tolkien in its world, and by which I also of course mean his real life friendship with CS Lewis. The book had been created as part of a wager between the two (Tolkien never completing his end of the sci-fi bargain), and you can sense how much the two collaborated. Dr. Ransom, the novel's protagonist, is a philologist, he is essentially Tolkien incarnate, walking around the planet of Mars, which, fittingly, is outfitted with an incredibly deep linguistic lore and cohesion. It's like you look at how the language of Malacandra fits together with itself and you just know Lewis and Tolkien sat at a table one day and worked it out where the roots come and what sorts of sounds they would have from and how some words would be similar to others, it's just so profound like that.
Loading...
