by Stanley Anderson » February 21st, 2007, 3:22 pm
For that pure enjoyment of wonderment and exploration of an unknown and fascinating place that I remember feeling so strongly with the Narnia books, I also felt it with two of Arthur C. Clarke's books. The first was Clarke's first novel The City and the Stars (it is a novel length expansion of the novella Against the Fall of Night which is wonderful too, though best to get the entire novel if one can). It is not just "in the future", but millions of years in the future -- how can an author possibly presume to extrapolate that far into the future? But Clarke does it without having it seem dated as many Science Fiction books are susceptible to. (By the way, there was a sequel to Against the Fall of Night, not by Clarke, called Beyond the Fall of Night that is interesting, but in no way compares to the wonder I felt for the original.)
The other Clarke book that gave me that feeling of wonder was Rendezvous with Rama. Again, there were several sequels churned out, some with mild interest, but in no way, to me, comparing to the first book.
I might also add the Swallows and Amazons books by Arthure Ransome (there are 12 of them). These and the Clarke books of course do not have the "fantasy" and theological elements that Narnia has (though they have glimpses of something joyful in the human mind that somewhat corresponds I think), but they have that "longing for that distant hillside" that Lewis refers to in his description of joy (at least for me -- each person has their own particular sources of joy, I'm sure)
(Of course Wind in the Willows and LotR fall into place here, but they have been mentioned already.)
--Stanley
…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.