Kyle Harrison
to-read
That Hideous Strength
That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups
- Author
- C.S. Lewis
- Published
- 1945
- Pages
- 382
- Recommended
- 2 times
Why it’s on the list: The third of Lewis’s Space Trilogy, and the one that is really about a research institute — published in 1945, the same year as The Abolition of Man, whose argument it dramatizes.
Where I heard about it
- @SketchesbyBoze — on X, February 2026, pushing back on the claim that Lewis would have liked AI: “Please read That Hideous Strength, a book that features evil humanity-hating scientists seeking to build God & a talking head that’s basically a demonic chatbot.”
- Charlie Kirk — on @j_bambrick’s compilation of every book Kirk recommended across his episodes and videos, September 2025.
Connections
- C.S. Lewis — author.
- Out of the Silent Planet — first in the same trilogy, saved separately from a different post.
- Artificial Intelligence — the reason the book keeps being re-recommended eighty years on.
- Religious Intellectualism