"Where day never shuts his eye, up in the broad fields of the sky" {Milton}

In reading C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet last night, I came across the quote below. I wasn't thrilled with the entirety of the book, it was a little dull and uninspiring, and I much prefer L'Engle's metaphysical stories to this one. Maybe my judgment is partly due to the fact that I am not very much a space enthusiast, and pretty much find all Star Trek and Star Wars-esque fantasies silly and tiring. However, there were a few great passages worthy of quoting and I consider the following one of them. Briefly, this quote is of a human who was taken to a wonderful purple and bright world (Mars, if you can believe it!), who came across certain strange creatures, and of his perception of them:

"It was only many days later that Ransom discovered how to deal with these sudden losses of confidence. They arose when the rationality of the hross tempted you to think of it as a man. Then it became abominable-- a man seven feet high, with a snaky body, covered, face and all, with thick black animal hair, and whiskered like a cat.

But starting from the other end you had an animal with everything an animal ought to have-- glossy coat, liquid eye, sweet breath and whitest teeth-- and added to all these, as though Paradise had never been lost and earliest dreams were true, the charm of speech and reason.

Nothing could be more disgusting than the one impression; nothing more delightful than the other. It all depended on the point of view."

. . .