Dr. Michael Ward, Anglican clergyman, writer, and speaker and, until recently, Chaplain of Peterhouse in the University of Cambridge, will speak about his new book, Planet Narnia, at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 13, at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.   Ward’s thesis, as described in the event announcement:

The Chronicles of Narnia are beloved the world over, making them perhaps C.S. Lewis’s best-known work. However, the Chronicles seem peculiarly disjointed in their mythology: each book differs from every other in apparently haphazard ways. This thematic tangle led some, like Lewis’s close friend J.R.R. Tolkein, to dismiss the series entirely. Given Lewis’s appreciation of craft and cohesion, many scholars have sensed that there must be a hidden thread binding the tales together, but their proposals have failed to be broadly persuasive- until now.

In his recent book, Planet Narnia, Dr. Michael Ward argues that the underlying unity between the seven Chronicles of Narnia comes from what many would consider an unlikely source: C.S. Lewis’s lifelong fascination with the “seven heavens” of medieval astrology.

Details on the event, sponsored by UCSD’s Graduate Christian Fellowship, can be found here.   A Facebook site for discussing the event (before and after) has been set up here.  The book’s website, including links to reviews and such, can be found here; the excessively detailed FAQs page makes for particularly interesting reading.