Aslan Creating the World in The Magician’s Nephew

As I said I’m pretty excited about this book receiving an adaptation. I am especially curious about how Greta Gerwig will film one of its most spectacular yet problematic aspects: how Aslan creates the world of Narnia with his song.

All this time the Lion’s song, and his stately prowl, to and fro, backwards and forwards, was going on. What was rather alarming was that at each turn he came a little nearer. Polly was finding the song more and more interesting because she thought she was beginning to see the connection between the music and the things that were happening. When a line of dark firs sprang up on a ridge about a hundred yards away she felt that they were connected with a series of deep, prolonged notes which the Lion had sung a second before. And when he burst into a rapid series of lighter notes she was not surprised to see primroses suddenly appearing in every direction. Thus, with an unspeakable thrill, she felt quite certain that all the things were coming (as she said) “out of the Lion’s head.”

[ . . . ]

The Lion paid no attention to them. Its huge red mouth was open, but open in song not in a snarl. It passed by them so close that they could have touched its mane. They were terribly afraid it would turn and look at them, yet in some queer way they wished it would. 

This description sounds similar to the creation of Arda written by fellow Inkling J. R. R. Tolkien; in his version it is Eru, the supreme deity, who creates the other gods and the Middle-earth itself with music. Lewis published his take in 1955 while Tolkien’s came to light in 1976 when The Silmarillion was released. Since Tolkien worked on his Middle-Earth histories throughout his life I bet he had the original concept which Lewis later cribbed, with Tolkien’s permission I hope. But I’ve yet to find any scholarly analysis of this.

Not a few artists have tried to capture the above scene, and most of them, well, look comical.

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Netflix’s The Magician’s Nephew to Be Set in 1955

A chubby Digory with a schoolboy satchel on the streets of 1950s London. That may be no-nonsense Aunt Letty behind him.

I’ve been aware of director Greta Gerwig’s helming of this project for a while now, but my interest was only cursory since the news had been swirling around for a few years with nothing to show for it. However, in the past month, the actual filming has begun and from the set photos we’ve been able to get a glimpse of Gerwig’s vision – there’s been a major time change from 1900 to 1955, making The Magician’s Nephew set in a post-war England during the Cold War, not the late Victorian Age as was written.

A meta moment where a 1950s street advert for paint echoes Aslan’s creation of Narnia

Like a lot of fans I was surprised, and unlike a lot of fans, I’m very stoked to see this take on it.

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It Rhymes With Takei [Reading Challenge 2025]

It Rhymes With Takei

by George Takei and Harmony Becker (artist)
Adapted by Steven Scott and Justin Eisinger
Penquin Random House, 2025

[ #1 Year of the Snake: A book published in any of the Chinese Years of the Snake: 2025, 2013, 2001, 1989, etc. ]

Since I didn’t get into my Howdy, stranger (a book about immigration) pick for this year I substituted another category, Year of the Snake. The book was It Rhymes With Takei, George Takei’s autobiography of sorts. It’s a graphic novel like his award-winning earlier memoir They Called us Enemy which was about his childhood in a Japanese internment camp during WWII. It Rhymes with Takei is a sort-of sequel about his adult life and how he got into acting and — surprise! — activism, something I never knew about the actor. Mostly I knew him as Sulu from the 1960s Star Trek and in more recent years, memes where he utters  “Oh my” over and over again and denounces certain politicians as douchebags in a stentorian tone. The two aspects never quite came together for me and though I was amused, I didn’t know he got from point A to point B.

The book explains all of that. Takei’s activism took many forms — civil rights, architectural preservation, city planning. But despite being gay, he didn’t participate in LGBT activism, at least not in his earlier decades. As he explains it, he stayed in the closet both because of the damage it would cause to his career and to his other activism, some of which involved state and city appointments to power. This was the focus of the book and it was handled very effectively. The same artist who worked They Called us Enemy, Harmony Becker, did the artwork which was just as lively and enjoyable as their earlier collaboration. Takei came out as gay in 2005 and since has burst into the limelight in way he never did in his more conventional career.

The book also serves as a concise history of gay rights in American from the 1990s forward. It’s sad to think that since the book’s release in June of this year the federal right to gay marriage, which came about in 2015. is now in danger of being taken away yet again.

The book was also fascinating in how it shows the behind-the-scenes aspect of an actor’s life. Though Takei accomplished a lot in his life and had a wide network of connections in Hollywood and the greater world, some of which interacted in surprising ways, I have the feeling he was not unique. Peel back the veneer of even a minor celebrity’s private life and one might find the same thing. That is pretty humbling.

 

Writing Advice from C. S. Lewis

 

Worldbuilding Wednesday 8/20/25: Let’s Talk About the Splendour Hyaline (Narnia LXXII)

Close to what I imagine the ship looked like, minus the sails.

“It’s like old times,” said Lucy. “Do you remember our voyage to Terebinthia—and Galma—and Seven Isles—and the Lone Islands?”

“Yes,” said Susan, “and our great ship the Splendour Hyaline, with the swan’s head at her prow and the carved swan’s wings coming back almost to her waist?”

“And the silken sails, and the great stern lanterns?”

“And the feasts on the poop and the musicians.”

“Do you remember when we had the musicians up in the rigging playing flutes so that it sounded like music out of the sky?”

This passage, from the beginning of Prince Caspian, hints at the adventures the Pevensies had as adult kings and queens in Narnia. In fact, aside from The Horse and His Boy, it’s the only place their royal lives were described. (The hundreds of fanfics don’t count.) It’s more than a little bittersweet, though the  idea of hanging musicians in the rigging (that is, the sails) seems ostentatious; it’s the sort of thing the Narnian equivalent of Kim Kardashian might done. I mean, if I was a musician I certainly wouldn’t want to be dangled from the spars on a windy, moving ship, though to be fair, likely it happened when the ship was moored for a party.

That aside, I had always assumed the Hyaline of the ship’s name referred to springtime, as the similarity to hyacinth suggests. Not so! Hyaline is an archaic English word that refers to a smooth or glassy appearance that can be either  transparent or semitransparent.  It is derived the Greek hyálinos, meaning transparent, and hýalos, meaning crystal or glass. Together with Splendour the name suggests a ship sailing on a clear, glassy stretch of sea, as hyaline was also used as a poetic synonym for a body of water or even the sky.

From heav’n-gate not far, founded in view
On the clear hyaline, the glassy sea.

— John Milton, Paradise Lost

These days hyaline is rarely used even in poetry. It mostly turns up in medical terminology where it refers to all sorts of nasty stuff.  Which makes sense, given in how it made the jump from Greek to Latin.

I imagine most Narnian sea-faring ships had similar high-falutin’ names, such as The Dawn Treader which was built after Caspian’s Telmarine liberation. In fact, I’ll postulate the Pevensies kept two Royal ships in the Golden Age, the other being named the Splendour Opaline. It makes sense.

Using a mix of lovely-sounding archaic words, here’s some ship names the Narnians might have used. (More than a few sound like modern-day cruise ships, but oh well.)

 

Names of Narnian Ships

Vesperwinds

Sovereign Drifter

Argent Pilgrim

Splendor of the Foam

Gossamer Tempest

Graven Solace

Silverlark

Lucent Victory

Herald Incarnadine

Nocturne’s Breast

 Thalassa Rose

Empress of the Dawn

Marvelous Serendipity

Splendid Encomium

Glory Clinquant

Marvel of Helios

Halcyon Princess

Lunar Enchantment

Eventide Harmony

Starspinner

Narnian Group Costuming

Along the lines of the lamppost post (punny!) below: it’s not so hard to create a Narnian costume, even a group one. This trio used an expert hand in theatrical makeup along with some simple costumes and props: fur coat, Halloween  wig, white garments, and a nicely painted cardboard box, with hangers. It gets the point across.

The Lamppost

Here we have one of the most overlooked characters in The Lion, the Witch, and Wardrobe: the lamppost. The young lady portraying it clearly takes her job very seriously. She shows no emotion, as a pole made of metal and glass would, and should. Other members of the play’s cast might have danced and cavorted around her, wept and laughed, overacted; but she remains stiff and stoic, handling the role as an honor, even if she had been overlooked for the more plummy parts.

Worldbuilding Wednesday 8/13/25: Caravan Stops of Calormen (Narnia LXXI)

Calormen Outpost, by Gkaida

Cavaransies have existed for thousands of years along trading routes in India, the Middle East, and North Africa. They provided travelers a place to eat, rest, and restock their supplies. Usually they were set at intervals along the road, the spacing calculated by the time spent in a typical day’s travel. Many of them were built like forts, high walls keeping out bandits and such and an open interior to keep animals and warehouse goods. As some caravans could contain up to 500 camels, the size of these places was truly titanic.

Exterior of a large caravansery in India

There were no caravanseries in Calormen’s Great Desert. Lewis tells us there was only a single oasis between Tashbaan and the Archenland mountains,  and that was too small to support a large army’s passing. That was why neither Archenland or Narnia were ever invaded by land. But other parts of Calormen were connected by trading roads and the Tisroc likely sponsored traveler’s rests there. One is hinted at in The Horse and His Boy: the city of Azim Balda, situated at a crossroads, where messengers rode out. (Courier services were also a feature of caravanseries.)

In that vein, here’s some caravansary stops with evocative names.

 

Caravan Stops of Calormen

Pool of Flying Feathers

Chamna Cistern

Nine Palms Oasis

Caverns of Ishaq

El-Tahyal Caravansery

Spring of the Faithful Virgin

Tashrani Salt Pans

Tower of the Sparrow

The Jeweled Oasis

Ruins of Saam-Hur

Fort Chemandz

Lost Lake