Fellowship & Fairydust

Night Operation: Classic Science Fiction from the ‘First and Last’ Inkling. Owen Barfield. Introduction by Jane Hipolito. Barfield Press, Second Edition, 2009.

Not much has been written about Owen Barfield, despite being one of C.S. Lewis’ oldest friends and the co-trustee of Lewis’ literary estate until 1979. Barfield wrote prolifically—fantasy, philosophy, poetry, and literary criticism. Some of his books, particularly Poetic Diction, had a substantial impact on Lewis and Tolkien. Hardcore Lewis fans probably know that The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is dedicated to Barfield’s daughter, Lucy.

Despite these interesting connections and Barfield routinely getting mentioned as one of the four major Inklings (alongside Lewis, Tolkien, and Charles Williams), few books focus on him. One could probably fit all the books written about him on a single bookshelf.

In the last decade, the Owen Barfield Literary Estate has helped remedy that situation by reprinting several of Barfield’s classic books and publishing some never-released works. Night Operation, a science fiction novella written in 1975, is one of the latter. The book follows Jon, a child born in Underground, a closed society in a retrofitted sewer system. Generations ago, when “terrorist outrages were becoming so frequent in cities as to be almost a feature of daily life” (8), humans went under the earth’s surface and established this closed society.

Jon grows up in an efficient world. Human waste is instantly dehydrated. Education no longer follows the three Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic). Concerns that the Rs made some children cleverer than others led to a new democratic system: the three Es (ejaculation, defecation, eructation). Although people who championed the three Rs have been “dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-second century” (5), one of Jon’s teachers helps him apply to study in the History Museum.

As Jon reads his way randomly through guarded books, looking at what existed before Underground was founded, he finds many concepts he does not understand. He finds words he does not know, and tracks down their original meanings as best as possible. Eventually, Jon shares his discoveries with his two friends, Jak and Peet. They find that they are all dissatisfied with Underground but have different views on what to do about it. Peet wants to change Underground for the better. Jak and Peet want to see what is beyond Underground.

Soon, it becomes clear that Underground is birthing new social movements that will create a crisis. The only way the three friends can find a way forward is by doing what no one has dared: slip past the guards and go Aboveground. Only once they see what is outside can they find the full perspective they need.

Structurally, Night Operation has some interesting parallels to a little-known American film released about four years before Barfield wrote his novella. THX 1138, written and directed by George Lucas, depicts a dystopia where people (identified by random numbers and letters) have shaved heads and wear white tunics. They live in underground bunkers where their jobs include building robots (which make up the police force) and monitoring each other on hidden cameras. Solace comes from confession booths (equipped with glowing pictures of Jesus and artificial intelligence confessors), lame television comedies, and virtual pornography. One man, THX 1138, betrays the system when he stops taking his mandated medication and experiences normal emotions for the first time. He falls in love with his female roommate, LUH 3417, but authorities arrest them for “deviancy.” The rest of the film follows THX’s attempts to escape prison, find LUH, and escape the underground society. Rumor has it nuclear war turned the land above into a wasteland, but it’s his only option.

Lucas and Barfield both depict an underground society where emotion has been prohibited. The difference is Lucas emphasizes little moments above all else. He provides some clever jokes about commercialized religion (what could be more branded and commercial than a Siri-like program taking your confession?) Lucas also creates great scenes, like a malfunctioning robot policeman who keeps walking into a wall. The film’s imagery—THX running down sparse white corridors like an insect racing through a ventilation system—is quite memorable. However, Lucas seems more interested in the atmosphere than in the story.

Barfield, in contrast, is very interested in his characters. After the initial scene setup, there are pages of dialogue where Jon, Jak, and Peet discuss Jon’s love for language and what particular words mean. In one memorable conversation, Jak tries to explain why he’s developed a different kind of attachment to a woman he knows. He can’t explain an affection that differs from lust, and Peet suggests the answer is “you honour her” (27). Honour is the word Jon is puzzling over, the word that seems to be at the root of the word love. These conversations combine clever humor with a thought-provoking idea: what happens when words are forgotten? How does someone articulate being in love when he has only been told about copulation?

Despite keeping his story short, Barfield uses these conversations to make the material more thought-provoking than many stories about people trying to escape dystopias. The repartee between the heroes create some lively intellectual conversations about the themes. There is also a certain biographical element: the novella’s summary on the Owen Barfield Literary estate website observes that Jon, Jak, and Peet parallel Barfield, C.S. Lewis, and Cecil Harwood (another Inkling, who worked with Barfield to manage Lewis’ literary estate for several decades). Read as material inspired by Barfield’s real-life experiences of intellectual community, Night Operation makes for interesting reading alongside J.R.R. Tolkien’s letters recalling Inklings meetings (or Humphrey Carpenter’s imagined Inklings conversation in The Inklings).

Barfield’s depiction of an education prohibiting language makes his dystopian authorities more insidious than in many other dystopias. Lucas’ authorities command that no one can have feelings, which is terrifying enough. Ray Bradbury’s authorities in Fahrenheit 451 command that no one can read, which is even worse. Prohibiting reading prohibits tools that nurture the base of feelings: independent thought. George Orwell’s authorities in 1984 command that no one can have “unapproved thoughts,” which attacks independent thought more fundamentally.

However, even Orwell’s dystopia still has reading and writing to keep some form of thought possible. Barfield’s dictators command that no one can have a vocabulary; they want to remove any thought. Even Orwell’s Thought Police are redundant in the world Barfield imagines. Who needs propaganda books and sting operations in a world run on the worldview: “we cannot all think… but we can all excrete” (Barfield 7)?

The ramifications become even more terrible if one realizes language’s crucial role in Barfield’s thought. Across various nonfiction books, Barfield argues that language is more than how humans talk about things: it’s how humans perceive things. Humans don’t just perceive their environment; the words they use carry bits of meaning shaping how they see their environment. Consequently, different words change how humans perceive the world. Human consciousness evolves over time, and studying language is studying how it evolves.  

“In the common words we use every day the souls of past races, the thoughts and feelings of individual men stand around us, not dead, but frozen into their attitudes like the courtiers in the garden of the Sleeping Beauty.” — History in English Words, pg. 6

Tolkien built on this idea when he spoke to Lewis during that famous September 1931 night on Addison’s Walk. Tolkien argued that when someone sees a tree, they may think of it as purely an organism; the ancestral people who named it a “tree” saw something else, a part of creation that was all “myth-woven and elf-patterned” (Carpenter 43). Lewis recognized that Tolkien was using a similar argument to what Barfield presented in Poetic Diction (ibid).

Suppose Barfield is correct that language affects human consciousness, and studying language shows what human consciousness was like in the past. If so, a dystopia that limits people’s vocabulary does more than just limit their literacy: it stunts their consciousness.

The flip side of this idea may be seen in Lewis’ 1945 novel That Hideous Strength. While not a conventional dystopian novel, Lewis imagines a dystopian regime as NICE takes over England. The fact Orwell reviewed That Hideous Strength in 1945 for the Manchester Evening News (Dickieson 1) has helped enhance its reputation as an unconventional dystopian tale.

In That Hideous Strength, NICE recruit Mark Studdock discovers that his superiors never use language clearly. His superior, Wither, speaks in a circuitous academic tone, never clarifying his meaning. Lord Feverstone explains that Studduck’s primary job will not be to write things up, but “write it down—to camouflage it” (41). Even when Studdock’s colleagues discuss blatant crimes, they avoid saying things outright. Studdock asks how he can follow their new instructions and write a press release about a riot that hasn’t happened yet. Feverstone laughs and says, “you’ll never manage publicity that way, Mark” (127). Lewis emphasizes the threat not so much eliminating language but of abusing it. NICE, a collection of scholars and scientists—people who should have the highest respect for language, for precise terminology—go out of their way to use language to hide their actions. In doing so, they redirect people’s perceptions. In Barfield’s terms, NICE seeks to corrupt human consciousness by abusing the thing that human consciousness needs to flourish: good language and a robust understanding of how to use it properly.

Even for readers not seeking the Inklings connections, Night Operation has surprising prescient moments worth exploring. In her introduction, Jane Hipolito argues that “for 21st-century readers, inhabiting the post 9/11 world, Barfield’s portrayal of the oppressive, claustrophobic effects of anxiety on human communities is startlingly timely” (ix). Twelves years since these words were written, terrorism feels even more prevalent (not to mention other violent phenomena like shopping mall shootings). The possibility of people living underground has become all too plausible. Douglas Rushkoff reports that “billionaire preppers” are already building underground bunkers and other safe havens to survive a future crisis, however it may come (1).

Equally surprising, Barfield depicts a future where sex has been so disconnected from feelings that many residents rely on “battery friends” for gratification (21). As of this writing, at least five companies are producing “sexbot” prototypes. At least one book (Jason Thacker’s The Age of AI) has already been released advising readers that sexbot tech is coming soon and how to navigate its religious and philosophical issues.

All told, Night Operation is well worth exploring not just as an underread book by an underread Inkling but as a clever science fiction story that deserves the label “more relevant today than ever.”

Sources Cited:

Barfield, Owen. History in English Words. London: Methuen & Co, 1926.

—. Night Operation. Barfield Press, 2009.

Carpenter, Humphrey. The Inklings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, First American Edition, 1979.

Dickieson, Brenton. “George Orwell’s Review of C.S. Lewis’ ‘That Hideous Strength.’” A Pilgrim in Narnia, 17 August 2015. apilgriminnarnia.com/2015/08/17/orwellonths/.

Lewis, C.S. That Hideous Strength. New York: Scribner, 2003.

Rushkoff, Douglas. “The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse.” The Guardian, 4 September 2022. theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff.

Thacker, Jason. The Age of AI. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020.

THX 1138. Directed by George Lucas. American Zoetrope, 1971.

Further Reading:

Salter, G. Connor. “Owen Barfield: The First and Last Inkling.” Christianity.com, 31 August 2022. christianity.com/wiki/people/owen-barfield-first-and-last-inkling.html

—. “Other Inklings (and Similar Writers) You Probably Haven’t Read.” Fellowship & Fairydust, 28 July 2022. fellowshipandfairydust.com/2022/07/28/other-inklings-and-similar-writers-you-probably-havent-read/.

Tait, Edwin Woodruff. “The Forgotten Inkling.” Christian History No. 113, 2015, pp. 46-49. christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/the-forgotten-inkling.

Learn more about Owen Barfield at OwenBarfield.org.

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