Earth

“*It was all there in that little disc-London, Athens, Jerusalem, Shakespeare. There everyone had lived and everything had happened; and there, presumably, his pack was still lying in the porch of The Rise near Sterk.*” - *Out of the Silent Planet*
In Clive Staples Lewis's Space Trilogy, **Earth**, also known as **Thulcandra** (meaning **Silent Planet**), **Tellus**, the **Wounded World**, the **Fallen World**, and the **Dark World**, was the third planet in the Field of Arbol. It is between Perelandra (Venus) and Malacandra (Mars), and one of the four Low Worlds, along with Viritrilbia (Mercury), making it one of the newer members of the Solar System.

Thulcandra is also the only planet to appear in all the novels - *Out of the Silent Planet*, *Perelandra*, *That Hideous Strength* and *The Dark Tower*. It is the subject of an interplanetary blockade — hence its name, the Silent Planet because there is no communication between it and the other planets. Earth is considered a fallen world, under the control of The Bent One, so the other planets do not have control over it.

Like Malacandra, Glundandra, Lurga and Neruval, it has its own moon, Sulva which is also a battleground between good and evil forces, because it falls within this blockade. Its moon is far bigger than any of the other planets in terms of proportion, especially when compared to the Malacandrian moons.

## Names

"Thulcandra" is the name in Old Solar, meaning "silent planet", because the other planets do not hear from it. This is due to the fact that it is ruled by The Bent One.

"Tellus" is an old Latin name for "earth" or "soil".  There is a similarity between the first syllable of Thulcandra and the name Tellus, but it is never made clear whether that is coincidental.

People from Earth are thus known as Thulcandrians or Tellurians.

## People from Earth

Earth is the home of the narrator and the main hero of the novels Elwin Ransom, as well as Edward Rolles Weston, Richard Devine and others. The Un-man is also of Earthly origin, likely being one of the Dark Eldila, and possesses Weston's body.

Humans are the hnau of Thulcandra, and many people are mentioned throughout the Space Trilogy.

When Augray the Sorn meets Ransom, he correctly surmises that he must be from a planet with stronger gravity than Malacandra. He says that he could not be from Glundandra, because otherwise he would be "flat as plates", so suspects Thulcandra by elimination.

## Nature

Earth is an ocean world, like Perelandra (Venus), but with continental landmasses and no Floating Islands. Unlike Malacandra (Mars), it has a thick atmosphere and only one type of hnau. Like Malacandra and Perelandra, Earth has a diversity of beautiful plants and animals. However, some elements on Earth have a contempt for the natural world - when the Un-man, a human possessed by one of the Dark Eldila from Earth visits Perelandra, he sets about killing the friendly wildlife for no reason other than sadism; likewise the N.I.C.E. also see nature as a ladder to be kicked away... However the N.I.C.E. aim to destroy that.

Eldila, the beings involved in the early days of the shaping the planets, have placed Earth under quarantine. A group of eldila arrived on Earth and Mars, and embedded it with spiritual matter so that the hnau and their culture could emerge. As chaos in the universe started to rise, the eldila intervened more in preserving civilization. Some of them would go on to become Oyéresu. The *Oyarsa* of Earth, The Bent One, who during the Bent Years waged war against the others and Maleldil. The Eldila then placed Earth under quarantine or a blockade, silencing it from the rest of the Solar System. Sulva or the Moon is within this blockade, because The Bent One cannot normally extend his power beyond its orbit. The eldila resident on, or actually imprisoned in, Earth are Dark Eldila, bent Eldila, who we see in *That Hideous Strength* as macrobes.

Many humans are likewise corrupted, although some endeavour to prevent that corruption spreading. In *That Hideous Strength* we learn of a technocratic group known as the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments who proclaim that they wish to use science and technology to improve the human race, when in fact their aim is to use those tools for oppressive purposes.

## Background

Earth is the biggest planet in the inner solar system, although it is similar in size to Venus. It is also the only planet currently known to have life, although there is possible evidence of it elsewhere. It has a thick atmosphere and is one of the few places known to have plate tectonics. It is also a lot more volcanically active than most other worlds in the Solar System apart perhaps from the Moon Io.

## Locations on Earth

* Belbury
* Bracton College
* Bragdon Wood
* University of Cambridge
* Cure Hardy
* Edgestow
	+ University of Edgestow
* Logres
* Numinor
* University of Oxford
* The Rise
* St. Anne's on the Hill
	+ Manor

## Cultural references and influence

* The group Thulcandra take their name from the Old Solar for Earth in the book.
* Christian metal group King's X recorded an album called *Out of the Silent Planet* and included a song of the same name on their second album, *Gretchen Goes to Nebraska*..
* Iron Maiden recorded the song *Out of the Silent Planet* on their 2000 album, *Brave New World*. They have written songs based on the works of number of other SF authors including those of Ramsey Campbell, Frank Herbert and Robert Heinlein.
* Silent Planet, a Christian metalcore group. after the first book of the trilogy. They currently have one full-length LP and two EPs.
* Circle of Dust, a Christian industrial band, reference The Space Trilogy on Disengage, an album which includes two instrumental tracks named *Thulcandra* and *Perelandra*.
* Christian horror punk band Blaster the Rocket Man, whose lyrics frequently subsist on monster themes, borrowed heavily from The Space Trilogy in their album *The Monster Who Ate Jesus*. The last track on the album "Tundra Time on Thulcandra" is a tribute to *Out of the Silent Planet*, with an allusion to the planet Perelandra as well. "Malacandra on my mind / Perelandra all the time / Nevermind it's tundra / It's tundra time."
* The Thulcandrian Federation

## Quotations

### *Out of the Silent Planet*

* "It was not always so, once we knew the Oyarsa of your world—he was brighter and greater than I—and then we did not call it Thulcandra. It is the longest of all stories and the bitterest. He became bent. That was before any life came on your world. Those were the Bent Years of which we still speak in the heavens… It was in his mind to spoil other worlds besides his own. There was great war, and we drove him back out of the heavens and bound him in the air of his own world… There doubtless he lies to this hour, and we know no more of that planet: it is silent. We think that Maleldil would not give it up utterly to the Bent One, and there are stories among us that He has taken strange counsel and dared terrible things, wrestling with the Bent One in Thulcandra. But of this we know less than you; it is a thing we desire to look into.” - the Oyarsa of Malacandra in Out of the Silent Planet
* “They [the Malacandrians ] were astonished at what he had to tell them of human history—of war, slavery and prostitution. “It is because they have no Oyarsa,” said one of the pupils. “It is because every one of them wants to be a little Oyarsa himself,” said Augray.”
* “It was all there in that little disc-London, Athens, Jerusalem, Shakespeare. There everyone had lived and everything had happened; and there, presumably, his pack was still lying in the porch of an empty house near Sterk.”
* "It is the Bent One, the lord of your world, who wastes your lives and befouls them with flying from what you know will overtake you in the end. If you were subjects of Maleldil you would have peace.”
* "He had thought it barren: he saw now that it was the womb of the worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth with so many eyes--and here, with how many more! No: space was the wrong name.”
* “He wondered how he ever could have thought of planets, even of the Earth, as islands of life and reality floating in a deadly void. Now, with a certainty which never after deserted him, he saw the planets - the 'earths' he called them in his thought - as mere holes or gaps in the living heaven - excluded and rejected wastes of heavy matter and murky air, formed not by addition to, but subtraction from, the surrounding brightness.”
* “No. Thulcandra is the world we do not know. It alone is outside the heaven, and no message comes from it.”
* “I see now how the lord of the silent world has bent you. There are laws that all hnau know, of pity and straight dealing and shame and the like, and one of these is the love of kindred. He has taught you to break all of them except this one, which is not one of the greatest laws; this one he has bent till it becomes folly and has set it up, thus bent”
* "It directed his attention to something like a small window. Whatever it was, it did not appear to work like an earthly telescopes Ransom thought; though an attempt, made next day, to explain the principles of the telescope to the sorn threw grave doubts on his own ability to discern the difference. He leaned forward with his elbows on the sill of the aperture and looked. He saw perfect blackness and, floating in the centre of it, seemingly an arm's length away, a bright disk about the size of a half-crown. Most of its surface was featureless, shining silver; towards the bottom markings appeared, and below them a white cap, just as he had seen the polar caps in astronomical photographs of Mars. He wondered for a moment if it was Mars he was looking at; then, as his eyes took in the markings better, he recognized what they were – Northern Europe and a piece of North America. They were upside down with the North Pole at the bottom of the picture and this somehow shocked him. But it was Earth he was seeing – even, perhaps, England, though the picture shook a little and his eyes were quickly getting tired, and he could not be certain that he was not imagining it. It was all there in that little disk – London, Athens, Jerusalem, Shakespeare. There everyone had lived and everything had happened; and there, presumably, his pack was still lying in the porch of an empty house near Sterk."
* "Many of the pictures he could make nothing of. One that particularly puzzled him showed at the bottom a segment of a circle, behind and above which rose three-quarters of a disk divided into concentric rings. He thought it was a picture of the sun rising behind a hill; certainly the segment at the bottom was full of Malacandrian scenes – Oyarsa in Meldilorn, sorns on the mountain edge of the harandra [table-lands], and many other things both familiar to him and strange. He turned from it to examine the disk which rose behind it. It was not the sun. The sun was there, unmistakably, at the centre of the disk: round this the concentric circles revolved. In the first and smallest of these was pictured a little ball, on which rode a winged figure something like Oyarsa, but holding what appeared to be a trumpet. In the next, a similar ball carried another of the flaming figures. This one, instead of even the suggested face, had two bulges which after long inspection he decided were meant to be the udders or breasts of a female mammal. By this time he was quite sure that he was looking at a picture of the solar system. The first ball was Mercury, the second Venus – 'And what an extraordinary coincidence,' thought Ransom, 'that their mythology, like ours, associates some idea of the female with Venus.' The problem would have occupied him longer if a natural curiosity had not drawn his eyes on to the next ball which must represent the Earth. When he saw it, his whole mind stood still for a moment. The ball was there, but where the flame-like figure should have been, a deep depression of irregular shape had been cut as if to erase it. Once, then – but his speculations faltered and became silent before a series of unknowns...He looked at the next circle. Here there was no ball. Instead, the bottom of this circle touched the top of the big segment filled with Malacandrian scenes, so that Malacandra at this point touched the solar system and came out of it in perspective towards the spectator. Now that his mind had grasped the design, he was astonished at the vividness of it all. He stood back and drew a deep breath preparatory to tackling some of the mysteries in which he was engulfed. Malacandra, then, was Mars. The Earth – but at this point a sound of tapping or hammering, which had been going on for some time without gaining admission to his consciousness, became too insistent to be ignored."

### Perelandra

* "He asked them how they were known to the old poets of Tellus. When and from whom had the children of Adam learned that Ares was a man of war and that Aphrodite rose from the sea foam? Earth had been besieged, an enemy occupied territory, since before history began. The gods have no commerce there. How then do we know of them? It comes, they told him, a long way round and through many stages. There is an environment of minds as well as of space. The universe is one – a spider's web wherein each mind lives along every line, a vast whispering gallery where (save for the direct action of Maleldil) though no news travels unchanged yet no secret can be rigorously kept. In the mind of the fallen Archon under whom our planet groans, the memory of Deep Heaven and the gods with whom he once consorted is still alive. Nay, in the very matter of our world, the traces of the celestial commonwealth are not quite lost. Memory passes through the womb and hovers in the air. The Muse is a real thing. A faint breath, as Virgil says, reaches even the late generations. Our mythology is based on a solider reality than we dream: but it is also at an almost infinite distance from that base. And when they told him this, Ransom at last understood why mythology was what it was – gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility."
* "When He died in the Wounded World He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less. Each thing, from the single grain of Dust to the strongest eldil, is the end and the final cause of all creation and the mirror in which the beam of His brightness comes to rest and so returns to Him. Blessed be He!"
* “It is not for nothing that you are named Ransom,” said the Voice... The whole distinction between things accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and myth, was purely terrestrial. The pattern is so large that within the little frame of earthly experience there appear pieces of it between which we can see no connection, and other pieces between which we can. Hence we rightly, for our sue, distinguish the accidental from the essential. But step outside that frame and the distinction drops down into the void, fluttering useless wings. He had been forced out of the frame, caught up into the larger pattern… “My name also is Ransom,” said the Voice.”
* “I thought ... that I was carried in the will of Him I love, but now I see that I walk with it. I thought that the good things He sent drew me into them as the waves lift the islands; but now I see that it is I who plunge into them with my own legs and arms, as when we go swimming. I feel as if I were living in that roofless world of [Earth] where men walk undefended beneath naked heaven. It is a delight with terror in it! One's own self to be walking from one good to another, walking beside Him as Himself may walk, not even holding hands. How has He made me so separate from Himself? How did it enter His mind to conceive such a thing? The world is so much larger than I thought. I thought we went along paths--but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is the path.”
* “The word 'human' refers to something more than the bodily form or even the rational mind. It refers also to that community of blood and experience which unites all men and women on the Earth.”
* "Long since on Mars and more strongly since he came to Perelandra, Ransom had been perceiving that the triple distinction of truth from myth and both from fact was purely terrestrial-was part and parcel of that unhappy distinction between soul and body which resulted from the fall. Even on earth the sacraments existed as a permanent reminder that the division was neither wholesome nor final. The Incarnation had been the beginning of its disappearance. In Perelandra it would have no meaning at all.”

### That Hideous Strength

* "When Logres really dominates Britain, when the goddess Reason, the divine clearness, is really enthroned in France, when the order of Heaven is really followed in China – why, then it will be spring. "
* "*We shall fall upon your moon, wherein there is a secret evil, and which is as the shield of the Dark Lord of Thulcandra–scarred with many a blow. We shall break her. Her light shall be put out. Her fragments shall fall into your world and the seas and the smoke shall arise so that the dwellers in Thulcandra will no longer see the light of Arbol. And as Maleldil Himself draws near, the evil things in your world shall show themselves stripped of disguise so that plagues and horrors shall cover your lands and seas. But in the end all shall be cleansed, and even the memory of your Black Oyarsa blotted out, and your world shall be fair and sweet and reunited to the field of Arbol and its true name shall be heard again.*" (*That Hideous Strength*)

## References

1. ↑ In many other science fiction novels, the term "Terra" is used, meaning "Land", but the translation here is more literal.