McDermott The Importance of Digestibility 2

 I am not a science fiction buff. I don’t understand science, I get irritated when I don’t understand things right off the bat, and usually tend to give up very quickly when both of these things are combined together. I talked in a previous blog post about how this happened with the guest speaker’s book and how everything was almost too new, causing me to strongly dislike it.

However, Lewis manages to avoid this just like he did with Narnia when writing Out of the Silent Planet. He begins it will a very easily digestible, conventional plot about a standard kidnapping (much like how UFOs abduct cows in fields). The people behind it? Very standard villains: a mad scientist and greedy assistant. While very common, it’s still enjoyable (even my favorite movie ever relies on this last mad scientist trope).


It’s very simple to get accustomed too and doesn’t throw the reading right into the middle of a new world without warning. We watch as Ransom (quite literally) moves from our everyday reality into the second world, providing us with a smooth transition that’s easily digestible. And Lewis doesn’t start throwing things at our faces, either – he introduces new concepts like aliens and foreign language to us step by step, ensuring that we’ve understood and had time to grasp one thing before moving to the next.


Additionally, like in that other post, Lewis also builds on what we already know is real in the real world to create something unreal in the second. The three native species on Malacandra resemble things we already know about: the hrossa, otters (but able to walk); the pfifltriggi, frogs (but with tapir heads); and the seroni, humans (but with feathers). In both of these ways, Out of the Silent Planet met the digestibility requirement I need when reading science fiction.

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