return from the dead, with the usual unfortunate
consequences. It is one of the few inconsequential
stories among the very large number of novels and
short stories that Leiber produced during his life-
time. He is perhaps more honored now than when
he was alive, and interest in his work remains
lively and widespread.
Lewis, C. S. (1898–1963)
The British writer and academic Clive Staples
Lewis is best known for his seven-volume CHRONI-
CLES OF NARNIA, a series of fantasy novels for chil-
dren. Various children cross over from our world
into Narnia for a series of adventures among talk-
ing animals and wicked witches in situations that
are usually Christian metaphors. Although that se-
ries is uneven and occasionally internally inconsis-
tent, it has remained very popular ever since it first
appeared. Lewis also wrote several short fantasies
for children, most of which have been collected in
Boxen(1985). They are occasionally amusing but
lack the stature of his other fiction.
His first fantasy title, The Screwtape Letters
(1942), was intended for adults. It consists of a
series of letters between two demons, both resi-
dent in hell, one advising the other on the best
way to tempt mortals. The Great Divorce(1946)
suggests that the souls of the damned might be al-
lowed brief visits to heaven, and that most of
them would find it more demanding than hell and
prefer to cut short their visit. Lewis’s sardonic
humor is, unfortunately, largely absent from his
later work. His only other fantasy was Till We
Have Faces(1956), a retelling of the legends of
Eros and Psyche in which obsessive love becomes
a destructive force.
Lewis also wrote a trilogy that is generally ac-
cepted as science fiction but that relies on a meta-
physical underlay. Out of the Silent Planet(1938),
Perelandra (1943, also published as Voyage to
Venus), and That Hideous Strength(1945, published
in abridged form as The Tortured Planet) take two
contending characters to Mars, Venus, and then
back to Earth. One of the characters is clearly
meant to represent the devil, and we learn that
each planet has a god or spirit associated with it
and that the god of Earth has gone insane. The
middle volume is a retelling of the temptation of
Eve in the Garden of Eden. Lewis demonstrated
that he had the talent to be an important and en-
tertaining writer, but much of his work is flawed by
his heavy-handed allegories.“Ligeia”Edgar Allan Poe(1838)
The narrator of this classic story is the man to
whom the Lady Ligeia was married, a partnership
so trusting that he never once learned or cared to
learn her family name or anything of her back-
ground prior to their meeting. Although she is an
exquisite beauty, there is some strangeness about
her appearance that he is never quite able to iden-
tify, although he thinks it is something about her
eyes. Their marriage seems perfect but, alas, she is
struck with a fatal disease that finally claims her
life, although only after a magnificent struggle in
which she vows to defy death itself and bids her
husband to remain loyal to her whatever might
happen. Despite her determination to live, she per-
ishes a short while later.
Distraught, the narrator moves to England,
where, after some time has passed, he remarries,
this time to Lady Rowena Trevanion, apparently
acting on impulse. His motives are unclear, be-
cause he still grieves for Ligeia, is cruel to his new
wife, who he loathes, and is often in the grip of
drugs he takes to deaden the pain of loss he still
feels acutely. Lady Rowena is soon in the grip of a
series of mysterious maladies that threaten to make
the narrator a widower yet again. In her fevers and
sometimes when she is well, she complains of
strange sounds and movements around her, as
though she were being watched.
In due course, Rowena dies. The narrator is
sitting alone with her corpse when he thinks he
detects hints of remaining life. Several times over
the course of the next few hours, Rowena—or at
least her body—stirs as if wakening, but each time
her color fades and she returns to lifelessness. Fi-
nally, just before dawn the body rises, fully alive
once more, but the narrator is shocked to discover
that he is looking into the eyes of the long-dead
Ligeia, not his current wife. Several modern au-
thors have used a similar device—a dead spirit
possessing the body of a dying successor—but“Ligeia” 213