There used to be a Webring for the Inklings, but it has been discontinued.
The webring idea was a good way of linking sites that had similar themes., but unfortunately it was taken over by Yahoo, which made the process of managing it more difficult.
It then split from Yahoo again, but the process of managing it did not become any easier.
The Inklings webring has been taken over and merged with an unrelated Webring, and the linking codes will no longer work..
If you'd like to discuss anything on these pages about books and literature, and I hope you will, then the best way of doing it is through our BOOKS discussion conference, or the THEOLOGY conference. You can join these conferences either by calling a BBS linked to the FamilyNet network, or by subscribing to them through e-mail mailing lists called family.books and family.theology.
I also recommend that people who enjoy the writings of the Inklings communicate through the rather underused newsgroup alt.books.inklings.
The Inklings were a group of authors in Oxford, England, who used to meet at a pub called the Eagle and Child (popularly known as the Bird and Baby) to discuss their work. They included C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield.
Lewis wrote several works of pop theology, and a series of books for children about a magical land called Narnia, ruled by a lion called Aslan. He also wrote three science fiction novels, Out of the silent planet, Perelandra and That hideous strength. The first of these deals with a mad scientist and a wicked financier who kidnap a philologist called Ransom and take him to Mars (Malacandra), where they meet three species of hnau (intelligent rational beings) called hrossa, sorns and pfifltriggi. Hrossa (hross) were poets, sorns (sorn) were scientists and pfifltriggi (pfifltrigg) were technicians. The planet also had a planetary ruler (archon, oyarsa), who is actually the ancient Roman god Mars, but in terms of Christian theology a planetary angel or ruler. The "silent planet", Thulcandra, is earth, and is ruled by a bent Oyarsa more commonly known as the satan or the devil. Perelandra is Venus, and Ransom makes another voyage there to foil the evil plans of Weston the mad scientist. He is carried there by eldils (eldil, eldila), who are angels. That hideous strength is set on Earth, and also has some mad scientists trying to revive Merlin, so that with his aid they can rule the world.
Charles Williams wrote some novels, poetry and theological works. His poems include Taliesin through Logres and Region of the summer stars. Among his novels are War in heaven, about a satanist who wants to get hold of the holy graal (grail) by hook or by crook, The greater trumps, about the original Tarot cards, and what happened when someone misused them, The place of the lion, which is about what happened when principalities and powers got loose and wandered around the world.
Tolkien is better known, so needs little introduction. He wrote about Hobbits, elves, dwarves and men, orcs and goblins and dragons and rings of power.
His book The Silmarillion is not as well known as his other books, and deals with the creation of the world by Eru (also known as Iluvatar), and the Valar and Maiar, in the days when elves were the main inhabitants.
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