Post #4040692

2026-07-23 16:22 UTC

@mxchara@seattle.pink When you say "the first book" (of the Narnia series), do you mean "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe"? Or "The Magician's Nephew"? I know that TLTWATW was the first written and published book in the series, but for some idiotic reason "The Magician's Nephew" has been officially marked as the first in the series in many later printings. I quite appreciate your take on all this, by the way. I mean on CS Lewis in general. He really does display the classic zeal and arrogance of a typical convert. Can't resist grabbing the microphone to lecture the reader a lot of the time. Robert A. Heinlein did the same thing, although the God that he was promoting was himself—or more likely, Virginia Heinlein. I'd have said that his Good was Ayn Rand, but that doesn't feel quite right somehow.

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@mxchara@seattle.pink 2026-07-23 16:27

@Quasit@beige.party oh I refer to the original publication order of course. That idiocy about rearranging the books into chronological order was heavily insisted upon by Douglas Gresham, Lewis's stepson and Joy Davidman's child by her previous marriage who turned into a typical evangelical shit and joined forces with U.S. Army officer Walter Hooper who butted in after Lewis's death to take charge of his literary estate on grounds that really ought to be examined more closely. I know about Gresham's involvement because I once knew him. I was on some C. S. Lewis mailing lists for a while and got to know what a sinister and inflexible figure he was, and thus the topic of the ordering of the Narnia books became offlimits to discussion.

Open ##4040762