by Dr. U » November 5th, 2006, 3:50 am
I read The Dark Tower & etc. also some years ago, and later KL hypothesis. Looking back now, I think this particular book is a little like some of the massive amount of Tolkien novel fragments out there, including some of the early MSS of Lord of the Rings - they weren't published at all, or not until a lot of revision b/c the author recognized they weren't ready to be published. If CSL did write DT, he must have recognized it as not his best and dropped the project.
IMO one piece of evidence in support of his authorship might be the similarity to the novels of Charles Williams, his good friend. Some of those also really are creepy, although in a redeemed way as comprehensive novels. I haven't had a chance yet to read Shadowmancer, but Williams may have been the first to write gothic Christian novels. The characters in Williams books are a lot like the ones in DT, more academic and esoteric than most of Lewis' novel characters, and suddenly their research takes them places they didn't expect, often into very dark and threatening places.
If you've never read any of William's novels, you might like them. All Hallows Eve - about an AntiChrist figure - is one of the best, although I also found Descent into Hell and The Place of the Lion really stuck with me, there were things in both of them that Williams communicated to me that I've never forgotten and have become part of my "received wisdom" decades later.
I think Ministering Angels was published, in one of the pulp science fiction magazines of the 50s. My guess is CSL wanted to try his hand at that type of genre for fun as an author. I myself thought it was a clever premise, that he was getting at a truth about the real diversity of men's personalities. (I suspect it may have been B.J. - before Joy - she might have whacked him upside the head if he wrote it while she was his wife, since he didn't get the diversity of women's personalities down as well in the short story.)
Incidentally, I remember reading an interview or taped conversation that CSL was in, in which he mentioned several of his favorite SciFi authors at the time in American pulp sci fi mags - he mentioned both Poul Anderson and Cordwainer Smith, for example. I'd love to know more what he thought about Cordwainer Smith, who was an exceptionally brilliant man in multiple arenas of life. He went through a similar pilgrimage as CSL from agnosticism/atheism to Christian faith, and along the way produced some science fiction that is way out there, not quite like anybody elses!
