The Dark Tower (1977 novel)
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The Dark Tower is a fragment of a novel attributed to C. S. Lewis and published posthumously by his personal secretary, Walter Hooper in 1977. It appears to be the start of a sequel to Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet dealing with time travel, but the story is incomplete — it contains gaps in the narrative and ends abruptly.
Hooper relates that he rescued the 64-page manuscript containing the draft of the story from a bonfire of Lewis' writings early in 1964, a couple of months after Lewis' death. Some have questioned whether the novel is authentic; Kathryn Lindskoog in particular has advanced the theory that the story is a forgery constructed by Hooper or at his behest. Because of the story's setting, Hooper has assumed that it was written immediately after Out of the Silent Planet in about 1939, and stated that the late Gervase Mathew had told him that he had heard The Dark Tower read to the Inklings about that time. However, the accuracy of this claim has also been questioned. Inklings scholar John D. Rateliff has suggested that the story could have been written some years later, about 1946, pointing to a reference in a letter by Lewis's friend J.R.R. Tolkien to a story by Lewis that could be The Dark Tower.
Critics of the authenticity of the story have pointed out its resemblance to stories by other writers, including A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle and The Planet of the Dead by Clark Ashton Smith. Template:Lit-stub