That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups was published by John Lane at The Bodley Head in 1945 and is the final volume of Lewis’s Space Trilogy — a novel radically different from its predecessors. Where Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra were interplanetary romances, That Hideous Strength is set entirely on Earth, in a fictional English university town, and reads as a cross between Charles Williams, George Orwell, and Arthurian romance.
The Novel
The N.I.C.E. (National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments) is a government-backed research institute that is systematically taking over the town of Edgestow and, by extension, England itself. Behind its technocratic facade, the N.I.C.E. is controlled by demonic intelligence — the macrobes (dark eldila) who have been ruling Earth since the Fall. Their plan: to abolish humanity itself, replacing organic life with mechanical perfection.
Against them stands a small community at St. Anne’s, gathered around Ransom (now the Pendragon, Arthur’s successor as the spiritual guardian of Logres — the hidden, true England). The battle is fought partly through the marriage of Mark and Jane Studdock: Mark is drawn into the N.I.C.E. by ambition and cowardice; Jane is drawn to St. Anne’s by her prophetic dreams. Their reconciliation — and their submission to proper authority — is the novel’s emotional resolution.
Merlin returns from his enchanted sleep, is recruited by Ransom, and destroys the N.I.C.E. by invoking the planetary intelligences (the Oyéresu of the other planets) to bring down the curse of Babel upon the institute’s banquet.
Collecting That Hideous Strength
First edition (John Lane / The Bodley Head, London, 1945): Red cloth binding. Dust jacket.
Market values (with dust jacket):
- Fine in dust jacket: $3,000–$8,000
- Very good in dust jacket: $1,000–$3,000
- Without dust jacket: $300–$800
First American edition (Macmillan, New York, 1946): $800–$2,500 in dust jacket.
The complete Space Trilogy in first editions with dust jackets is a major Lewis collecting achievement, valued at $20,000–$50,000 for the set.