Tag: chronicles of narnia

Is There Another Narnia Novel?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of bbc chronicles of narnia

Once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen in Narnia

My friends and I were excited, back in 1964, when a new Edgar Rice Burroughs novel came out–15 years after his death. It was unearthed among his papers.

And of course “new” works by J.R.R. Tolkien came out pretty regularly, rescued from oblivion by the author’s son, Christopher.

But what I want to know is: did C.S. Lewis write another Chronicle of Narnia that has not yet been discovered among the vast amount of papers that he left behind? And we’ve also heard that he meant to go back to the published Chronicles and make certain corrections.

A blog called A Pilgrim in Narnia ( https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2016/07/06/linkscsl/ ) has a list of “lost” C.S. Lewis writings that have been recently published; and there’s still a great deal left that has to be sifted through. Letters, notebooks, ideas for stories or novels or lectures, some poetry–there is a raft of material that Lewis, like his friend Tolkien, never got around to publishing in his lifetime.

If there were an eighth Chronicle of Narnia, what would it be? I know I’m not the only one who’d like to see how Queen Susan ever got back to Narnia. In The Last Battle, she is missing: she has given up Narnia. But Aslan did say, “Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.” So either he’s wrong, which is not possible, or else there was another Narnia novel that badly needed to be written. In fact, some of C.S. Lewis’ legion of fans have already tried their hand at it: but I think it needs the master’s touch.

Is that story still hidden in a pile of unpublished material? No expert seems willing to bet on it.

But I wonder. Yes, I wonder.

A Brief Defense of C.S. Lewis (and Narnia)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Tom Baker as Puddleglum in the classic BBC production of The Silver Chair… One of my favorite Narnians

I still get comments from Christians who think The Chronicles of Narnia are rubbish and their author, C.S. Lewis, just two shades short of being an out-and-out pagan.

Well, his friend, J.R.R. Tolkien, warned him: put all those fauns and centaurs and river gods in Narnia–and Bacchus, of all things!–and readers are going to think there’s something not quite right about your Christianity. Worse, in the Narnia finale, The Last Battle, he has the old Professor say, “It’s all in Plato!” I love these books, but that line makes me cringe.

Nevertheless, I am here to plead with Narnia-knockers–please, give the man a break! He was an academic, surrounded by other academics along with college students. He could have just as easily wound up worshiping a box of rubber bands. That he had any Christianity at all is cause for celebration.

There is Christian gold in Narnia. It’s not hard to find. If you don’t care for it, only a fool tries to convince someone that he ought to like something that he doesn’t like. But at least grant me this:

For a man who started out as an atheist and was a college professor for most of his life, old “Jack” Lewis did just fine.

The Next Narnia Movie (Maybe): ‘The Magician’s Nephew’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

First it was going to be The Silver Chair, but everything got shuffled around and now the next Narnia movie’s going to be The Magician’s Nephew–or so it seems ( http://teaser-trailer.com/the-magicians-nephew-movie/ ). Really, I just can’t keep track of it anymore. But they’ve got a movie poster ready for it, even though they can’t give us a release date. Not this year, and probably not next year, either.

Whoever is actually working on the movie now–guys, could you please get this one right?

(While you’re waiting for them to get it right, sit back and enjoy this rendition of the theme music from the BBC-TV Narnia productions of the 1980s–still the gold standard for bringing Narnia to the screen.)

The first three Chronicles of Narnia movies of the 21st century didn’t do all that well at the box office, and no one in Hollywood seems to know why. Allow me to enlighten them.

Yo, the movies underachieved because:

a) You guys kept messing around with the stories, and the changes you made were never for the better. Never.

b) You’re afraid of C.S. Lewis’ forthrightly Christian message, so you kept soft-pedaling Aslan, which was to miss the whole point of the stories.

c) You don’t seem to think your audience is capable of appreciating the stories as C.S. Lewis wrote them, so you keep trying to shape them to what you think is the taste of a dumbed-down, text-messaging, doofus audience.

Like many, many others, I want these movies to succeed; but so far the movie-makers have been their own worst enemy.

But we should be thankful they haven’t taken the books down with them.