Theological Thriller

England's modern John Bunyan is a wise, witty, sad-faced Fellow of Oxford's Magdalen College named Clive Staples Lewis. Like the Inspired Tinker, Anglican Convert Lewis (The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce) writes of the trials and troubles of man's soul in a sinful world; to dramatize his theology he peoples his stories with a menagerie of sprites, devils, and fabulous monsters. Lewis' latest: That Hideous Strength (Macmillan, $3), third volume of a trilogy* begun in 1943. It is loaded with enough spiritual wisdom for a dozen sermons.

The plot revolves around an attempt by the powers of Evil to take over the earth. Evil's chief terrestrial representatives: a brace of devils (appropriately named John Wither and Professor Frost) who administer the vast N.I.C.E., an organization to handle postwar England's technology and scientific development--ostensibly for the benefit of the common man. The champions of Good: a handful of rather painfully decent English types under the leadership and protection of the trilogy's hero, Dr. Ransom. In Lewis' sure hands the story becomes well-written, fast-paced satirical fantasy.

As in many moral tales, Good is less sharply drawn than Evil; some readers may think good Dr. Ransom's mysterious sources of power more druidical than Christian. But for Christian Moralist Lewis, the allegory's the thing.

The devil abroad in his 20th Century world is the ultra-rational scientist-technocrat, for whom man is the measure of all things; who would storm heaven with test tubes, nuclear fission and pure reason. Of one of his satanic prototypes Lewis says: "He had passed from Hegel into Hume, thence through Pragmatism, and thence through Logical Positivism, and out at last into the complete void."

For Christian readers, Lewis' allegory adds up to an elaborate modern version of an old story which atomic man may well paste in his hat: The Tower of Babel.

*The other two: Out of the Silent Planet (on Mars), Perelandra (on Venus).

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