Dr. Edward Rolles Weston

*""You cannot be so small-minded as to think that the rights of an individual or of a million individuals are of the slightest importance in comparison with this."' - Weston in* Out of the Silent Planet

Professor **Edward Rolles Weston**, nicknamed **O Stranger** and **Stranger** by Tinidril, was arguably one of Clive Staples Lewis' greatest satanic characters. He first appears in Lewis's *Out of the Silent Planet*, the first novel in Lewis's *The Space Trilogy*, as an eminent physicist who has invented space travel. He is defeated by the novel's protagonist Elwin Ransom on Mars (known to its inhabitants as "Malacandra"). Weston returns in the second book, in an attempt to wreak havoc on Venus (Perelandra), the "new Eden."

Professor Weston develops interplanetary travel so humanity and their descendants (whatever they evolve into) could go out into the stars and survive throughout the cosmos. However, Weston doesn't care that this plan may involve wiping out other intelligent life. (In *Perelandra*, he abandons this goal in favour of a New Age-y philosophy he dubs "Spiritual Evolution".) Weston is a deconstruction of the Well-Intentioned Extremist who justifies his evil actions as necessary for the survival of the human race.

## Imperialism on Malacandra

In *Out of the Silent Planet*, Weston first appears with his accomplice, Richard Devine, attempting to abduct a mentally impaired young man named Harry, whom Weston considers subhuman and disposable. They plan to take him to Malacandra as a human sacrifice to Oyarsa, its ruling angel. It is then that they are surprised by a chance visit by Elwin Ransom, the main character of the novel, who is an old schoolmate of Devine. Ransom grows suspicious of their activities, and Devine persuades Weston to abduct Ransom instead.

Shortly after landing on Malacandra, Weston and Devine attempt to drag Ransom to the servants of Oyarsa, but an accident distracts them, and Ransom escapes. In the course of his adventures on Malacandra, Ransom learns that the Oyarsa, the being to whom he was supposedly to be sacrificed, wanted only to speak with a human to learn of the conditions on Earth, the 'Silent Planet'. The "civilized' Weston cannot understand this, expecting only savagery from "primitive" cultures.

It is eventually revealed that the immediate purpose of Weston's and Devine's journey to Malacandra is to mine Malacandra's abundant Sun's blood. This is the only motive of Devine, but Weston's plan is to open a new age of space colonization to ensure the eternal survival of the human race, an idea borrowed from Olaf Stapledon's *Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future*. The seeming humanitarianism of Weston's scheme is corrupted by his contemptuous and colonialist attitude towards all other forms of life, including the humane and intelligent Malacandrans.

## Colonising Eden

In *Perelandra*, the sudden arrival of Weston's spaceship on Venus is a great surprise to the self-doubting Ransom, who himself has been sent by an oyarsa to counter a mysterious threat. Weston's arrival mirrors the fall of Satan:

> *“Something like a shooting star seemed to have streaked across the sky, far away on their left, and some seconds later an indeterminate noise reached their ears.”*
>
>

Weston has undergone a philosophical conversion since his near-death in returning from Mars: he considers his former devotion to the human race as "a mere prejudice", and now wishes to spread "Spirit ... the blind, inarticulate purposiveness" which drives emergent evolution. In his personal theology, Weston has come to the fatal misunderstanding that God and the Devil are one Life Force, and that his great work is guided by this syncretic Spirit. Indeed, Weston calls Ransom to join him, since "*nothing now divides you and me except a few outworn theological technicalities with which organised religion has unhappily allowed itself to get incrusted. But I have penetrated that crust.*"

But under Ransom's probing, Weston's new philosophy proves as self-aggrandizing as the old: "*In so far as I am the conductor of the central forward pressure of the universe, I* am *it ... I, Weston, am your God and Devil. I call that Force into me completely .*..." As he opens his soul, Weston is possessed by evil and lost as an independent personality, his frozen features suggesting that "*either he was in no pain or in a pain beyond all human comprehension*." Ransom leaves to look for the Green Lady, and when he returns Weston is gone.

## Weston's end

When Ransom finds him again, surrounded by giant frogs that he has ripped-apart, Weston is no longer human, but has become the Un-man. The Dark Eldil possessing Weston works to corrupt the newly created race, tempting the Lady of Perelandra into disobeying the commands of Maleldil, while Ransom pleads with her to resist the Un-man. Eventually Ransom, realizing that he cannot defeat the Un-man with argument — and prompted by Maleldil — physically attacks the Un-man, and both are badly wounded in the ensuing fight, but neither can prevail. In an interlude, Weston's consciousness appears to resurface, dismaying Ransom with the confused horror of Hell:

However, it is impossible to distinguish whether anything he says is Weston or the Un-man working through him. Indeed, Ransom concludes:

Ransom finally kills Weston in the tunnels beneath Perelandra and rolls his body into a volcanic abyss.

Ransom, having carved a monument to the great physicist into the wall outside the caverns, makes his way up to a mountaintop, to meet the grateful Lady and the King of the new planet.

## Real life bases

Weston may be a caricature of Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902) an English South African businessman and imperialist politician. Like Rhodes, Weston is a racist; he is also amoral, rapacious, and hates God and religion. In a passing comment in *That Hideous Strength*, it is said that Great Britain has produced both heroes and villains, that for every Arthur the King, there is a traitor Mordred, for every Sydney, there is a Cecil Rhodes. In "Perelandra", Weston mentions his liking of the book of which Rhodes said "it made me who I am”: Winwood Reade’s *The Martyrdom of Man*, which expounded the ideology of secular humanism.

There is a glancing allusion to George Bernard Shaw: Weston's speech on Malacandra, like *Back to Methuselah*, ends with the words "It is enough for me that there is a Beyond", and Weston shares Shaw's (and Henri Bergson's) belief in the Life Force. Another possible influence is the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the goal of whose philosophy was the advent of the "super-man". Weston is also similar to the villain Saruman from J.R.R. Tolkien’s *The Lord of the Rings*.

The choice of the name "Weston" might be more than accidental, considering that in his speech in *Out of the Silent Planet* he presents himself very much as the proponent of "Western Civilization" in its most expansionist and aggressive mode.

Professor Weston can also stand for the scientific elitism that despises all other types of knowledge known as Scientism. Scientism can also refer to a form of dogmatic scientific practice which does not allow multiplicity of scientific opinion and may also dovetail into support for technocracy.

## Cultural references

Stephen R. Lawhead's *Song of Albion* trilogy contains numerous references to and parallels to the Space Trilogy. These include materialistic endeavours to gain access to forbidden worlds for material gain. Other references to the series include a main character named Lewis and a minor villain named Weston.