One day in the 1900s two men sat discussing late into the night, they sat around a table in the pub The Eagle and the Child. These two men were J.R.R. Tolkien and his best friend C.S. Lewis. These two Inklings were discussing and debating over the concepts of space travel and time travel. How would it work? What would it be like? Back and forth they went. They were unsatisfied with the stories of space and time travel that they were reading. So they flipped a coin. Lewis got space travel and Tolkien end up with time travel. And so they set out to craft there stories.

Lewis was a rapid writer and soon an entire trilogy came from this wager. The trilogy is known as The Space Trilogy or the Ransom Cycle. The first book was Out of the Silent Planet, the next Perelandra, and finally This Hideous Strength. The story tells of how a man visited different planets in the solar system governed by celestial beings. Each planet he visits has a different Genesis theme, and his goal is to stop a Satan-like villain from his evil schemes.

Tolkien on the other hand was slow and tedious writer. Of his time travel tale he only made four chapters. These four chapters can be found in The lost Road one of the twelve histories of Middle-earth. His story tells of a father and son being reembodied in different eras, starting with Edwin and Elwin in the modern age. They resurface again as Eadwin and Aelfwine from Anglo-Saxon legend, and then Aubidoin and Alboin from Lombardic. The time travel stretches all the way back to Tolkien;s Numenorian characters, Amandil and Elendil.

He said of his tale, “I began an abortive book of time-travel of which the end was to be the presence of my hero in the drowning of Atlantis. This was to be called Numenor, the land in the west. The thread was to be the occurrence time and again in human families (like Durin among the dwarves) of a father and son called by names that could be interpreted as Bliss-friend and Elf-friend.”

Since Tolkien never completed his work. he did not publish it but his son Christopher would later publish the fragment. It can be found in The Lost Road and other writings. It is the fifth book in the history of Middle-Earth series.

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were both great writers, changing the genres of fantasy, Christian life, and science fiction together.