Socratica Reads Episode 10 - The Magician’s Nephew by CS Lewis
What do you consider “real” science fiction? Does it include books like The Narnia Chronicles? In this episode of Socratica Reads, our host Kimberly Hatch Harrison talks about the increasingly common narrowing of the definition of science fiction, and recalls one of the Narnia Chronicles that she read as a child that does meet many of the criteria of science fiction, although it is a blend with various other genres.
You can buy your own copy of “The Magician’s Nephew” by CS Lewis here:
https://amzn.to/3C7JSns
And here is a complete set of “The Narnia Chronicles”:
https://amzn.to/3A6wP3A
My first book - How to Be a Great Student
ebook: https://amzn.to/2Lh3XSP
Paperback: https://amzn.to/3t5jeH3
Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3atr8TJ
visit our YouTube channel:
youtube.com/socratica
and our website socratica.com
If you find our work at Socratica valuable, please consider becoming our Patron on Patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/socratica
If you would prefer to make a one-time donation, you can also use
Socratica Paypal
https://www.paypal.me/socratica
We also accept Bitcoin! :)
Our address is: bc1qda47tgfyk67lxa7yqn8y5m02hjcglghsd5c58n
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome Everybody! To Socratica Reads. My name is Kimberly Hatch Harrison, and I’m the co-founder of Socratica. We make beautiful, futuristic educational videos. We focus on math, science, and computer programming, and you can find us on YouTube and on our website, socratica.com.
In this podcast, Socratica Reads, I’m tracing the books that have inspired our work here at Socratica. It shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise that it’s very often SCIENCE FICTION that got into our brains and helped us dream of the future. But I want to be clear - that’s a pretty wide net I’m casting.
Are you a sci-fi snob? Do you insist on your science fiction being HARD sci-fi? That is, the science fiction that focuses on rigorous applications of science and engineering, and usually features realistic rocket ships and perfectly calculated orbits and technically correct warp drives and evolutionarily plausible alien life forms?
Or can you accept that the genre is flexible, and that many remarkable works include elements of fantasy, drama, mystery...and that some of these books leave out the technological details?
I ask you this, because it seems to me that many people I know read themselves into a corner, where they only read the same kind of book over and over. It doesn’t help matters that we’ve moved away from wandering through libraries and physical bookstores. Part of that is due to the PandemicTime, but even before then - were you relying on Amazon recommendations, for instance, that are just based on what other people also bought? If you bought one book by Larry Niven or Andy Weir, you’re most likely to buy another hard sci fi book? It’s just common sense, it’s good for Amazon’s bottom line, but are you reading yourself into a self-imposed bubble?
And I say this with great affection, because I LOVE hard sci fi. But I read EVERYTHING, so of course, I’m biased - I think this is the WAY to be. I am being somewhat hypocritical, because I have very little patience for incorrect science in movies. Nonsense physics really makes my skin crawl - for instance. you see characters jumping and landing at laughably incorrect rates, and I just DON’T get it. This isn’t like a complicated physics problem, we’ve known the equations for a long time. There’s no reason to just eyeball it and go with what you think LOOKS cool.
So when things like that happen, it really takes me out of the movie and completely breaks the illusion. It makes me angry, because I can feel the machinery behind the movie, there’s some ignorant yahoo at his computer doing the animations, thumbing his nose at the laws of physics. We have a lifetime of experience observing the laws of physics, and so when they violate them in a movie, we see it instantly and we know it is wrong.
So, I get it, if you expect rigor and correctness in your sci fi books. I do get it.
I think there’s room for sci fi that respects science, but doesn’t put it in the center of the story.
Today I’m looking back at a book that I read at a very young age that I consider science fiction, of a sort. But it’s also high fantasy and a coming of age story. And while there is science taking place, it’s sometimes called magic. And yes, the details of how it all works are left as an exercise for the reader.
I’m talking about “The Magician’s Nephew,” by CS Lewis.
Depending on how you read the Narnia chronicles, this is either the first story or the sixth in the series.
Chronologically, it’s the first. We see the birth of Narnia.
What places this as scifi, for me, is not just that there is a character of a mad scientist (a cautionary tale), but also this work was my first exposure to the idea of parallel worlds. It gave me a picture of the birth of a world, The Big bang, Narnia-style. It also gave me the pleasure of watching children behave as scientists - Observing, exploring, deducing the rules of how travel between these worlds works.
If it’s been a while since you’ve visited Narnia, I hope you will read these books again, as a grownup, and think about how much they exposed you to important ideas, so you would recognize them when you saw them again, years later. Probably for me, the most important lesson from the Magician’s Nephew was this:
Just because you’re a scientist doesn’t mean you’re an enlightened human being.
I’m going to read a little of the Magician’s Nephew to you now, but I do hope you will dig up your old copy, or buy a new one. I’ll include a link in the description box. Are you ready? Let’s begin.
