England is the main setting for C.S. Lewis’s 1945 novel That Hideous Strength.
That Hideous Strength is the third volume of Lewis’s Space Trilogy, following Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. Unlike the first two novels, which take readers to Mars and Venus, this book is set primarily in England. Its plot centers on the fictional university town of Edgestow and the organization known as the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments, or N.I.C.E.
The story combines academic satire, political anxiety, technology, and supernatural elements. Mark Studdock becomes involved with N.I.C.E., while Jane Studdock experiences visions and encounters characters linked with the earlier trilogy. The novel’s title comes from a line in David Lindsay’s 1920 science-fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus.
Because the trilogy is often described as planetary science fiction, readers may expect the final book to take place on another world. Its setting is instead a fictionalized English landscape, making the social and institutional conflicts feel close to Lewis’s own time.