Name: LEWIS, Clive Staples Aged: 65
Born: November 29, 1898 Where: Belfast, N. IRELAND
Died: November 22, 1963 Where: Headington, Oxford, ENGLAND
Interred: Holy Trinity Church Cemetery, Headington Quarry, Oxford, ENGLAND
Married: Joy Davidman Gresham When: April 23, 1956 (died 1960)

Served in WWI as a member of the British Army's Somerset Light Infantry, where Lewis was a second lieutenant, and had the nickname, "Jack." Wounded in the back, Lewis wryly commented, "Oddly enough, by a British shell."

Noted as a prolific mainstream writer with Christian/religious themes. Friend and associate of J.R.R.Tolkien. Taught at Magdalen College at Oxford and later went to work for Cambridge as professor of Medieval and Renaissance English. An intellectual's intellectual, whose works are widely studied.

Influenced by the works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, Lewis was finally inspired to write SF by the works of Olaf Stapledon. "The idea of other planets exercised upon me a peculiar, heady attraction, which was quite different from any other of my literary intersts. That interest, when the fit was upon me, was ravenous, like a lust..." Lewis's Fantasy & Science Fiction work basically divides into three areas: (1) Children's stories, (2) a Martian SF trilogy, and (3) a series of short stories. Many of the last were published in America's Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lewis's favorite American pulp.

The seven children's novels, known as "The Chronicles or Narnia," are recommended by their author to be read in the following order: (1)The Magician's Nephew, (2) The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe; (3) The Horse And Its Boy; (4) Prince Caspian; (5) The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader'; (6) The Silver Chair; and, (7) The Last Battle.

The titles of Lewis's 'Ransom Science Fiction Trilogy' are: (1) Out of the Silent Planet; (2) Perelandra; and (3) That Hideous Strength.

Impacted by the horrible events of WWII, Lewis said that it was a terrible thing to live in a "post-civilized world." Following that thought to its end, Lewis would die on the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

PEN NAME: Clive Hamilton.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NARNIA link here.

BIOGRAPHY: Who Was Who in America, Vol IV, p571; C. S. Lewis, by Walter Hooper, Harper-Collins 1996; and Science Fiction Writers, Scribners 1982

OBITUARY: The New York Times, Nov. 25, 1963, p29 (w photo)

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