Customer Reviews

The Dark Tower and Other Stories

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This is one of those little treasures most people do not know about, and the story behind them is almost as fascinating as Lewis's characters and his life itself. Edited and compiled by Walter Hooper, who was secretary to Lewis in his later years. The story behind this collection is that one day Walter was walking by the cottage that Lewis and his brother Warnie Shared, and saw Warnie burning some 'rubbish'. Hooper asked what he was up to and Warnie replied he was clearing out some of Jack's (C.S. Lewis's) things. Hooper enquired into the contents and found out that they were unpublished manuscripts, stories ... Hooper asked for them and Warnie replied if they were not taken then and there they were going into the fire. A fire which supposedly burned for 3 days. One will always wonder what was lost to us from such a purging.

So Hooper saved this collection and some of the other writings that were published posthumously by the late great C. S. Lewis. These six stories are of a science fiction or fantasy nature. The first story The Dark Tower is of particular interest because it is a partial fourth story in Lewis's Science Fiction Trilogy Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. This one being set between the first and second book. This story makes up more than half of this collection. Yet one could ask what is a partial story with middle sections and the end missing be worth? Or be worth reading? And to be honest it would be a very good question.

I would have to state an emphatic yes it would! I would declare so for many different reasons. The first is that this is the only time we see Ransom in his office's hanging out with a group of professors discussing life the universe and everything. Does that not indeed sound like Lewis, and Tolkien and the rest of the Inklings who did just that. There has been much debate by many scholars as to the questions of if Lewis inserted himself into his fiction, as 'the professor' in the Narnia books, and many believe as Professor Ransom in this series. This gathering of friends is almost a scene out of Lewis's own weekly routine. The second reason is that we meet MacPhee here in this story, which chronologically takes place between book's 1 and 2 in the series. MacPhee does not show up in the trilogy till the 3rd book. This book gives us a tantalizing taste of a story that would give the published trilogy a fuller more rounded flavor and be amusing to read and debate the end of the story and the progression of Lewis's Thought.

Even if you only pick up this book for the first story it will be worth it. But the other 5 short pieces are worth a perusal as well.

I became a fan of C.S. Lewis in the 3rd grade when our home room teacher read the Chronicles of Narnia to our class. I recently re-read the books as an adult and enjoy them just as much as I did then. I really like Lewis's style of writing and I've read other works by him such as "The Screwtape Letters" and "The Great Divorce."

If you're looking for more stories by Lewis, be them in any form, this is a very interesting volume to have in your library, but it may leave you feeling a bit empty if you're longing for more soul-penetrating stories that teach you about yourself.

"The Dark Tower" is incomplete, but a vivid and highly interesting tale of the use of an imaginary device - a Chronoscope - that lets you view an other time the way you would view a star with a telescope. Lewis himself is in the story as one of a group of friends/scholars who meet to watch the happenings of the Dark Tower in the "Othertime."

The story is intense and riveting and I couldn't put it down, but there are pages missing in the middle of the manuscript supposedly discovered after Lewis's death as a newly discovered, previously unpublished work. The end of the short story is also absent... and there is no indication of how close to the end the reader is to the ending when the story is cut off literally in mid sentence. The positive thing is that the story is so well written, it will keep your mind reeling as to the outcome and fate of the characters involved. I've heard that the claims that this is an actual true work of C.S. Lewis is now being disputed, but if it is not of his hand, it sure reads like his style.

"The Man Born Blind" is an interesting account of a man born blind who gets his sight as an older adult and struggles with visual concepts such as "what is light." It's a very short story and if any of the stories in this volume are to be disputed, this one would be my pick... it doesn't read like Lewis and I think Lewis was far more observant of human nature and of his environment in general to have made some of the assumptions he did in this very short story.

"The Shoddy Lands" is pure Lewis... almost like "The Great Divorce," but in miniature. Very interesting explaination at the end that wasn't exactly what I was reading into it at first... a very good story.

"Ministering Angels" is not at all what you think it's about... but nonetheless an interesting futuristic tale of life on a human-colonized Mars. Also a very short story, but it's amazing how Lewis can depict a character so richly and vividly in just a few lines.

. . .have known for some time that grave questions have been presented about the authorship of "The Dark Tower". Lewis scholars like Kathryn Lindskoog (among others) have painstakingly demonstrated that, in all likelihood, a not insignificant fraud has been perpetrated on the literary world by a small number of persons who outght to have known better.

The legends surrounding the "discovery" of this "unknown manuscript" and its near consignment to the flames of a bonfire after Lewis' death have been proven demonstrably false -- and are continuing to be perpetrated mostly by persons who have a financial gain in the Lewis literary estate.

Hobbits (like myself) who love and revere Mr. Lewis almost as much as our own Master, will want to know the true facts of the matter, and will bypass this volume and purchase instead Mrs. Lindskoog's excellent "literary detection" books on the subject.

This volume should be recognized and rejected for what it is: a blatant attempt for profit at the expense of the good name of one of the finest writers of the 20th century.

For shame to the perpetrators of this hoax.

The Dark Towershows presents a different approach to time-space travel, since the main characters don't know when and where they are, all they know is that it is somewhere else, very otherworldy but at the same time familiar. A well written, clever story.

CAK

'm not going into the question whether Jack Lewis wrote The Dark Tower or not. Other reviews have already commented on that. I personally agree that much of the posthumous Lewis canon, and just about everything that has come from the hands of Walter Hooper, is very highly suspect. Given the nature of "The Dark Tower," I highly doubt he did write it. Much of Hooper's stories feel phony, such as the legendary bonfire and him sitting around with Lewis and Lewis asking Hooper what kind of books he wants him to write.

What I will comment on is the quality. Reading it, you get the sense Lewis (if it is Lewis), didn't really know where to go with his story; there are some very disturbing scenes. The Stingingman, with all its twisted Freudian implications, gives off an aura of 'bent' sexuality (to use a term from OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET). Although there were Christian symbols in it, there was not a corresponding image of goodness and a beautiful vision of Godliness to rally around. The trilogy is balanced in this respect: depicting horror, and counteracting that image with goodness. The N.I.C.E. had its counterpart, the house on St. Anne's. The staleness and artificialness of the N.I.C.E. was sharply contrasted by the natural beauty and life flowing from St. Anne's. In PERELANDRA we have a vision of the satanic Un-Man, along with that supreme vision of beauty The Green Lady. Not so in "The Dark Tower." The Stingingman is the most dominant image here. There is nothing to balance it out here.

The concept of this story was probably already embedded in Lewis's mind, because the ending of OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET hints at it. "If there is to be any more space-traveling, it will have to be time traveling as well ...!" The opening scene is dons, along with Ransom, discussing time, the only Christian being Ransom (though Lewis is there, I do not remember if he is representative of Christianity. Must likely he is). Most notable MacPhee is there, unchanged skeptic later to appear in THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH. The story is that these dons have a chronoscope that can see into an "Othertime", a concept used in Lewis' completed Narnia series. During their chronoscope experiments, they see an idol, one head and many bodies, along with a horned man. This horn man stings these people that come to pray to the idol in this room. The people stung become automatons and some grow horns. Soon they realize one of these automatons (which later turns into a Stingingman) looks remarkable like one of their own dons' assistant Scudamour. Scudamoure is not only in there, but also a double of his fiancee Camilla. Scudamour destroys the chronoscope, and is transported into the Othertime, where he has to convince Camilla he will not sting her. The Dark Tower and its city is besieged by White Riders, who desire to destroy the stinging man and his damned city of evil. When Scudamour was there, he could not say God, because it was not in their vocabulary/ One thinks of Gandalf the White Rider.

When read to the Inklings (presuming it is an authentic work; when asked, many of the Inklings never heard of this story), some thought of the main antagonist, the Stingingmen, had unpleasant sexual connotations. But there is some good stuff, such as Camilla. "She was so free to talk about things her grandmother could not mention that ransom once said he wondered if she were free to talk about anything else." To bad that it ended where it did; the plot was actually getting very intriguing. A vastly interesting fragment, although it is so disappointing it is only that - a fragment.

The rest are interesting. In THE MAN BORN BLIND, the story is told of in TOLKIEN AND THE SILMARILLION by Clyde S. Kilby, and out-of-print dated book about Tolkien. To quote my own review of that book, I do so now:

"A very notable feature is it also talked about the then unpublished C. S. Lewis short story about a man born blind and then getting his eyesight back by surgery, he doesn't understand the concept of light, thinking it a solid substance. It sounds something of a tribute to MacDonald's musing on lights as emphasized in his faerie tales. Or perhaps it was insipiered by that . . . . It is different than the story in some respects, and Hooper felt that Tolkien probably was told a version and had not read the story. "

THE SHODDY LANDS is about a man getting an inside view into a vain person's mind (a woman's). A stream of consciousness piece, which Lewis liked to call "Steam of Consciousness" is rather charming. This, and MINISTERING ANGELS, a story about a bunch of [prostitutes] going to relieve "sexual tension" of males upon Mars, which has rather comic events (the story was suggested by a serious suggestion by Dr. Robert S. Richardson in his article 'The Day After We Land on Mars." were published in periodicals SF magazines.

FORMS OF THINGS UNKNOWN is a piece about mythology on the moon, and very entertaining. The surprise ending, if you are familiar with mythology, is a very good idea, though if you are not then the whole story's point will be lost on you. AFTER TEN YEARS would have been another TILL WE HAVE FACES had Lewis lived to complete it. It would have been wonderful to see another work like TILL WE HAVE FACES. The story is tantalizingly brief, but, like THE DARK TOWER, was meant to be a complete novel.

This review used Hooper's preface and David C. Downing's PLANETS IN PERIL. Anyway, some good stuff, some bad stuff, but it is Lewis, after all. 3 stars. 3 stars because of the fragmentation, one extra because it is, after all, C. S. Lewis. Then again, maybe it isn't Lewis. (Check the stars.)

The title story, "The Dark Tower," is indeed unfinished. As another reviewer mentioned, several pages are missing in the middle. A little over a hundred pages in, the manuscript cuts off. *Just* at the point where the plot is starting to get interesting.

I loved it.

I haven't read many such unfinished novels before, but the mystery and intrigue seem all the better for it. Another draw is the story's central character, Elwin Ransom, from Lewis' little-known Space Trilogy. If you can deal with a true literary unsolved mystery, you may enjoy this.
Many of the other stories were quite unmemorable, and strangely, several feature central female characters that are annoying, nagging, or otherwise menacing personalities. When judged separately, that may not be problematic but reading them together left a bitter aftertaste.

In science fiction, Lewis is best known for his space trilogy ("Out of the Silent Planet", "Perelandra", and "That Hideous Strength"), and in fantasy, for his seven-volume "Narnia Chronicles" series. Less known is that Lewis also wrote a few genre short stories and a pair of unfinished novels.

The stories and the unfinished novels are the subject of this collection. It is worth nothing that all of them are available in other collections of Lewis's. To aid readers, in this review I've listed the works in this collection, with notes indicating other collections they have appeared in.

Table of Contents:

"After Ten Years" (1), (2)

"Forms of Things Unknown" (1), (2), (3)

"Ministering Angels" (1), (2)

"The Dark Tower" (2), (3)

"The Man Born Blind" (2)

"The Shoddy Lands" (1), (2)

Notes:

(1) also published in "Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories"

(2) also published in "Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces"

(3) Lewis's authorship of these is disputed.

Recommendations:

In general, to anyone interested in Lewis's shorter works, my best advice is to get "Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces", which, as of the time of this writing, is available from Amazon UK but not Amazon US. That collection consists of about 130 short works by Lewis. The works in that collection are mostly Christian, but it also include all his short works on science fiction and fantasy.

If you are interested in Lewis's science fiction and fantasy, and your budget or enthusiasm does not run to "Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces", then you might well want to get this, and possibly "On Stories, and Other Essays" as well (the essays in that collection generally deal with science fiction and fantasy).

Fans really on a budget who are interested in both the essays and the stories might want to get "Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories" instead of this - that includes most of the stories in this collection and most of the essays in "On Stories, and Other Essays".

This collection will surprise many readers. According to academic urban legend, the title story, an incomplete novel recovered from C. S. Lewis's papers and first published nearly 15 years after his death, is shoddily written, bereft of moral or theological significance, imbued with obscene and homoerotic imagery, and quite likely a crude forgery. That evaluation has been propagated so energetically and successfully that it is hard to remember that the book received generally favorable initial reviews and once upon a time bid fair to become the Lewis counterpart to "The Mystery of Edward Drood".

Having last picked up "The Dark Tower" two decades ago, I thought that I remembered a rather crude, incoherent adventure story, from which it would be pleasant to dissociate the purported author's reputation. It turned out, however, that I was remembering the image formed by the critics, not what was actually there.

Taking into account the fact that it is an unfinished draft, the prose of "The Dark Tower" is comparable to "Out of the Silent Planet". Both are in the vein of pulp science fiction, of which Lewis was an avid reader, and both suffer noticeably from the author's inability to weave convincing pseudo-scientific patter. In "Perelandra", Lewis solved that problem by substituting the openly supernatural for the scientific. Perhaps he would have hit upon the same device if "The Dark Tower" had reached a second draft.

The novel's central concept is movement among parallel universes, then a new idea in science fiction (first popularized by Murray Leinster, whose classic "Sidewise in Time" appeared in 1934). Lewis explains it by drawing on the relationship of lines to planes, an analogy long employed by theologians to illustrate how infinitely prolonged time differs from eternity.

In the opening chapters, a scientific team initiates contact between our time line and an "Othertime" that is, judging by broad hints in the surviving text, in thrall to one of the fallen eldils introduced in "Out of the Silent Planet". The central element of the plot, already in motion before the fragment breaks off, was evidently to have been an Othertime invasion of our world via the eponymous Dark Tower. A young scientist is prematurely caught up in the struggle by being switched with his double in Othertime, finding himself in the role of a loathsome tyrant torn between the habits of his assumed body and the moral impulses of his this-earthly mind.

The involuntary visitor to Othertime suffers a physical deformity that is the ground for accusing the work of obscenity. A small, wasp-like sting grows out of his forehead, containing venom that, when injected into the spine, converts humans into vacant automatons. The Freudian implications are obvious (and are pointed out by the narrator), but that is the extent of overt or covert sexuality. Readers who can find pervasive erotic imagery here probably spend their time covering up naked chair legs. The presence of any homosexual interest is sheer fantasy.

One cannot know, of course, simply on the basis of reading it, whether "The Dark Tower" comes from Lewis's pen or that of a skillful forger, but it presents Lewis-like concepts and cannot be relegated to pseudepigraphical status on the basis of any deficiency in literary merit.

Two of the "Other Stories" printed with "The Dark Tower" are also disputed. One, "The Man Born Blind", is an artfully fashioned parable, telling of a man who, given sight for the first time, grows suspicious because no one will tell him what light looks like. The editor dates the tale to the 1920's on tenuous evidence. Forensic tests have reportedly shown that the ink of the manuscript was manufactured after 1950, which is consistent with the high quality of the narrative and its implicit theological themes.

The second challenged story, "Forms of Things Unknown", relies on a surprise ending that becomes too obvious too quickly. It is akin in quality to the two other (unquestionably authentic) short stories printed here. "The Shoddy Lands" is an unsubtle message story, while "Ministering Angels", Lewis's lone attempt at comedy, is better in concept than execution. Rounding off the volume is "After Ten Years", comprising the shards of what was to have been a retelling of the aftermath of the Trojan War. Lewis was seriously ill when he started it, and his death left it too fragmentary to evaluate.

"The Dark Tower" and "The Man Born Blind" are the scorned stepdaughters of the Lewis literary family. It is time for readers and critics to look at them first hand, rather than uncritically accept some stepmother's assurance that, yes, Cinderella is really, really ugly and a changeling to boot.

Already a fan of Lewis' Space Trilogy, I was pleased to find this book in the mid 70's. It was easy to see where the book was intended to fit (between books one and two) and the plot developed well enough that I often wonder why Lewis abandoned it. The most frustrating times are when, right as you are getting interested in the action, the announcement appears, "The manuscript breaks off here..." Sometimes I wish some skilled writer would be intrepid enough to attempt to finish it, but in my more lucid moments I realize that it is best left just as it is.

The quality of the other short stories is uneven, but gives more insight to Lewis' dry sense of humor, profound imagination, and his "secular side."

This book is a "must read" for fans of C.S. Lewis' writing.

I enjoyed this book alot.While the Dark tower was really outthere it still kept you turning the pages and wanting more. the shoddylands spoke to me the most with its warnings about the shallowness of life with out God