Written during the dark hours immediately before and during the Second World War C. S. Lewis s Space Trilogy of which That Hideous Strength is the third volume stands alongside such works as Albert Camus s The Plague and George Orwell s 1984 as a timely parable that has become timeless beloved by succeeding generations as much for the sheer wonder of its storytelling as for the significance of its moral concerns. For the trilogy s central figure C. S. Lewis created perhaps the most memorable character of his career the brilliant clear-eyed and fiercely brave philologist Dr. Elwin Ransom. Appropriately Lewis modeled Dr. Ransom on his dear friend J. R. R. Tolkien for in the scope of its imaginative achievement and the totality of its vision of not one but two imaginary worlds the Space Trilogy is rivaled in this century only by Tolkien s trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Readers who fall in love with Lewis s fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia as children unfailingly cherish his Space Trilogy as adults; it too brings to life strange and magical realms in which epic battles are fought between the forces of light and those of darkness. But in the many layers of its allegory and the sophistication and piercing brilliance of its insights into the human condition it occupies a place among the English language s most extraordinary works for any age and for all time. In That Hideous Strength the final installment of the Space Trilogy the dark forces that have been repulsed in Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra are massed for an assault on the planet Earth itself. Word is on the wind that the mighty wizard Merlin has come back to the land of the living after many centuries holding the key to ultimate power for the force that can find him and bend him to its will. A sinister technocratic organization that is gaining force throughout England N.I.C.E. (the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments) secretly controlled by humanity s mortal enemies plans to use Merlin in their plot to recondition society. Dr. Ransom forms a countervailing group Logres in opposition and the two groups struggle to a climactic resolution that brings the Space Trilogy to a magnificent crashing close Author: C. S. Lewis Publisher: Scribner Book Company Published: 10/01/1996 Pages: 384 Binding Type: Hardcover Weight: 1.40lbs Size: 9.50h x 6.64w x 1.20d ISBN: 9780684833675 Accelerated Reader: Reading Level: 7.1 Point Value: 26 Interest Level: Upper Grade Quiz #/Name: 73560 / That Hideous Strength Review Citation(s): Christian Century 10/21/2008 pg. 32 About the Author Clive Staples Lewis born in Belfast Ireland in 1898 was for more than thirty years Fellow and Tutor of Magdalen College Oxford and at the time of his death in 1963 was professor of medieval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge University. His many books -- of fiction poetry theology literary scholarship and autobiography -- include The Screwtape Letters Mere Christianity Miracles and the seven volumes that comprise The Chronicles of Narni