Babel, Broken Worlds & The Abolition of Man: C.S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy as Prophetic Warning to the West

Acclaimed science fiction writer J.G. Ballard once said that the task of the science fiction writer is to look just around the corner into the future to see what is coming and to warn his fellows.

In this respect, the genre bears an unmistakable relationship to prophecy. Therefore, one could regard the science fiction writings of C.S. Lewis as a species of prophetic utterance.

Indeed, his Cosmic Trilogy is a fleshing out of the stark warnings which he made in his classic philosophical treatise, The Abolition of Man; in which, Lewis diagnoses a—if not the— principal malady of modernity: man’s seeming abandonment of a belief in the reality of objective truth. In Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, we see depictions of the consequences of this abandonment. We witness noble attempts to resist it; and, finally, we see the Babel-like catastrophe and comedy of errors which results from man’s attempt to claim for himself such godlike powers.

This symposium will evaluate the prescience of Lewis’s warnings—in his Cosmic Trilogy, and in The Abolition of Man, specifically, but also in his work more broadly—in the light of 20th and 21st century innovations in philosophy, education, science, and technology. We invite scholars of all levels and from all fields to explore any aspect of this topic in a manner suited to their own research interests.

Abstracts of 250 words, accompanied by a brief bio, can be submitted to Dr Curtis White and Professor John Gillespie at symposium@cslewisinstitute.org from 1st March to 1st July 2026.

Description supplied by the event organiser.