by Dr. U » December 8th, 2007, 3:51 am
In one of the books of essays by Lewis, I believe it's On Stories, he has an essay on species of science fiction, and mentions some details behind the writing of his own science fiction works. He hoped they would fall within the genre of sci-fi stories that tackle The Big Questions, but in a fantasy type of literature; he didn't personally have a taste for what he called "Engineer Fiction", in which possible future technologies are seriously explored in detail.
For example, Jules Verne accurately calculated, merely based on the laws of physics, some of the technical aspects that were later part of the Apollo moon launches - and these calculations are all included within his novel From the Earth to the Moon! But, if you read it, other than a headline type of thrill of "Man Goes to the Moon!", there's not really much depth to the characters, let alone any conflicts among them in how they view the universe. The only plot conflict is figuring out how to successfully launch a vehicle into space over the objections of nay-sayers.
Instead, Lewis seemed to hope that his type of sci-fi novel was more mythopoeic, or fantasy/dream-like, and the technical details should intentionally be as vague as possible, since it really didn't matter for his purposes HOW the spaceship worked, and might even detract from the story. In that opening chapter you cite, I think he's just trying to communicate the general sense of disorientation that Ransom is experiencing - this is NOT your normal English country manor, but what is really going on here? - which continues all the way to, and for some time on, Malacandra.