“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled.
All our difficulty comes with the others.
When did you meet a workman who believes the papers?
He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles.
He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs
about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats.
He is our problem.
We have to recondition him.
But the educated public,
the people who read the highbrow weeklies,
don’t need reconditioning.
They’re all right already.
They’ll believe anything.”
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Since completing this post, I’ve made innumerable attempts to learn more about the NICE’s current incarnation, but information about the organization – at least, beyond what C.S. Lewis presents in his novel – is remarkably elusive. (Understandable: Much has changed since 1946, not least the fact that the NICE is no longer headquartered in England.) Despite extensive searches using DuckDuckGo, and, that o t h e r search engine (y’know, the one headquartered in Mountain View, California, at which the arc of human history is tacitly understood to “progress” (Babel-like?) ever forward; always upward; ever higher…), I’ve been unable to identify either the Institute’s home page, or, links to the organization through any other website, whether governmental or private; whether in the Americas, Western or Eastern Europe, Africa, or Asia.
Likewise, though the Institute assuredly has a presence on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, these too remain elusive.
Well, not entirely true: I did come across one possible link. But, I’m not going to click on it. (Y’never know what might happen…!)
(Okay, just kidding! I thought it would be fun to indulge in brief speculation about parallel universes and alternate histories….)
But, I did find the image below: It’s conceptual art of a promotional / propaganda poster for the NICE, fittingly done in 1940s “atomic” style: The kind of image you’d see – 1984-like – in abundance, weather-marked with tattered corners yet always freshly replaced – upon the walls of any urban center.
The poster is one of many works created by J.P. Cokes as conceptual illustrations for That Hideous Strength, and can be viewed at Behance. J.P. Cokes has also created a great series of stylistically similar illustrations for Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, which – like That Hideous Strength; like so many other works of science fiction and fantasy (A.E. van Vogt, anyone?) – merits transfer from the printed page to animation, or, the “live” screen.
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You can view the cover of Avon Books’ 1958 abridged version of That Hideous Strength, published under the title The Tortured Planet (Avon # T-211), here.
(See review and discussion at Chicago Boyz website…)