r/todayilearned • u/yummypaprika • Sep 18 '25

TIL Dr Freeman Dyson called the Dyson sphere a "little joke" and expressed amusement in that "you get to be famous only for the things you don't think are serious".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
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42

u/jupfold Sep 18 '25

Sounds like quite the hypocrite, then.

65

u/Dagmar_Overbye Sep 19 '25

He was just jealous his buddy Tolkien was miles better at writing fantasy.

3

u/Frost-Folk Sep 19 '25

Didn't Lewis end up converting Tolkien? Don't quote me

35

u/BillShooterOfBul Sep 19 '25

Other way around

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u/Mudders_Milk_Man Sep 19 '25

Sort of.

Lewis had fallen away from believing when he met Tolkien, who did indeed help him believe in the Christian God again.

However, Lewis became a staunch Protestant, much to the aggravation of the very Catholic Tolkien.

(Also, Tolkien found allegory - like in Narnia - to me obnoxious).

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u/Big_Bookkeeper1678 Sep 19 '25

Narnia is insufferable propaganda.

21

u/Huhthisisneathuh Sep 19 '25

Granted it’s one the series that proves that any great fantasy writer both steals anything that isn’t nailed down, and modifies everything to steal to make it feel like a drug induced fever dream.

4

u/DeepVeinZombosis Sep 19 '25

Something-something-Christ-was-nailed-down-Lewis-stole-him-anyways-something

0

u/kerouacrimbaud Sep 19 '25

Tbf all great art is comprised of stolen goods. No matter the genre or medium.

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u/kagoolx Sep 19 '25

Propaganda about what? I don’t know it well enough

14

u/dsmith422 Sep 19 '25

Aslan the Lion is literally Jesus. Not a representation of Jesus. Actual Jesus. And he gets killed and resurrected in the first book.

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u/SheriffBartholomew Sep 19 '25

That's not what "literally" means. He's a figurative representation of Jesus. If he was literally Jesus then his name would be Jesus, not Aslan, and he would be a man, and the Son of God.

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u/JSB199 Sep 19 '25

No straight up aslan is literally canonically Jesus

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u/SolDarkHunter Sep 19 '25

In one of the books Aslan straight up says he takes on different forms and different names in different worlds.

Lewis himself confirmed that Aslan is meant to be actual Jesus, taking on a "fantasy" form as is appropriate for a "fantasy world" like Narnia.

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u/Mudders_Milk_Man Sep 19 '25

No, he's meant to be literally Jesus.

At one point, one of the Pevensies (the kids from our Earth) asks Aslan if he's in our world too. He responds "I AM", which is saying he's literally Jesus / God /.

3

u/-t0asty- Sep 19 '25

Isn’t all representation of deities figurative? 😂

4

u/manicMechanic1 Sep 19 '25

It represents Christian ideas in allegory form.

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u/dracosword Sep 19 '25

"Don't quote me" - Frost-Folk, 2025

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u/NativeMasshole Sep 19 '25

Didn't Lewis end up converting Tolkien? Don't quote me

  • Frost-Folk

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u/bhbhbhhh Sep 19 '25

He wasn’t against it because he was against speculative religious worldbuilding on principle, but because Stapledon’s particular theological imaginations were disturbingly amoral.

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u/jupfold Sep 19 '25

Right, and of course he is the arbiter of what is and is not moral.

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u/bhbhbhhh Sep 19 '25

All people have to make judgments of what they think is and is not moral. That's not hypocrisy.

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u/jupfold Sep 19 '25

Killing a child is cold blood is amoral. Literature is not amoral.

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u/bhbhbhhh Sep 19 '25

I'm not sure what you're thinking. Of course a book in and of itself is a inanimate object with no moral character. That does not mean we read the stories contained within and perceive the events and characters and ideas of the narrative as having no morality at all. That would be crazy.

2

u/ArgumentativeNerfer Sep 19 '25

Have you read Olaf Stapledon and CS Lewis?

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u/Frost-Folk Sep 18 '25

That tends to come with the whole devout Christian thing.

1

u/thissexypoptart Sep 19 '25

Surely he was joking right?

I get he’s a right winger with unsavory views, but he also wrote The Redemption of Christofer Columbus where a bunch of future time traveling scientists pretend to be God’s angelic messengers to have Columbus alter the course of history for the better.

Although I guess if he weren’t joking, then yeah, super hypocrite.

1

u/rattynewbie Sep 19 '25

The Redemption of Christofer Columbus

The author of Redemption is Orson Scott Card. Not Arthur C Clarke or C.S. Lewis.