'''That Hideous Strength''' is the third novel in what is called [[C. S. Lewis]]'s "space trilogy," although this one takes place on Earth and has fewer science-fiction elements. The philologist Ransom appears in this novel but is not the main protagonist; most of the novel follows a young Oxford don, Mark Studdock, who is lured and manipulated into joining a government-sponsored scientific institution, the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experimentation (or N. I. C. E.) The novel is different in tone from the other two in the space trilogy. It is overtly satirical, taking a jaundiced view of Oxford academic politics, the workings of bureaucracies, and Oxford life in the 1940s. | '''That Hideous Strength''' is the third novel in what is called [[C. S. Lewis]]'s "space trilogy," although this one takes place on Earth and has fewer science-fiction elements. The philologist Ransom appears in this novel but is not the main protagonist; most of the novel follows a young Oxford don, Mark Studdock, who is lured and manipulated into joining a government-sponsored scientific institution, the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experimentation (or N. I. C. E.) The novel is different in tone from the other two in the space trilogy. It is overtly satirical, taking a jaundiced view of Oxford academic politics, the workings of bureaucracies, and Oxford life in the 1940s. |