How CS Lewis Predicted the Metaverse and Called it Hell

The 20th Century Prophet Gave a Chilling Warning

Lewis Ungit, 1/25/25

In the conclusion to his prophetic 1945 novel, That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis portrays an initiation ritual into a shadowy global cabal whose members function as the antagonists in the story. The initiate, Mark Studdock, is brought into a room and left alone. The narrative continues with the below.

“He got up and began to walk about. He had a look at the pictures. Some of them belonged to a school of art with which he was already familiar. There was a portrait of a young woman who held her mouth wide open to reveal the fact that the inside of it was thickly overgrown with hair. It was very skilfully painted in the photographic manner so that you could almost feel that hair; indeed you could not avoid feeling it however hard you tried. There was a giant mantis playing a fiddle while being eaten by another mantis, and a man with corkscrews instead of arms bathing in a flat, sadly coloured sea beneath a summer sunset. But most of the pictures were not of this kind. At first, most of them seemed rather ordinary, though Mark was a little surprised at the predominance of scriptural themes. It was only at the second or third glance that one discovered certain unaccountable details –something odd about the positions of the figures’ feet or the arrangement of their fingers or the grouping. And who was the person standing between the Christ and the Lazarus? And why were there so many beetles under the table in the Last Supper? What was the curious trick of lighting that made each picture look like something seen in delirium? When once these questions had been raised the apparent ordinariness of the pictures became their supreme menace –like the ominous surface innocence at the beginning of certain dreams. Every fold of drapery, every piece of architecture, had a meaning one could not grasp but which withered the mind. Compared with these the other, surrealistic, pictures were mere foolery. Long ago Mark had read somewhere of ‘things of that extreme evil which seem innocent to the uninitiate’, and had wondered what sort of things they might be. Now he felt he knew.”[1]

Mark Studdock was looking at art that seemed innocuous or even pleasant at first but, when inspected more deeply, was twisted and menacing. Someone pointed out this passage to me and asked, “Why does this remind me of A.I. Generated art?” And it absolutely does. Almost 80 years before such art existed, C.S. Lewis wrote about it. But his vision of this twisted art was that it would be a tool to initiate a man into a demonic society.

I have written in the past about the fact that AI art almost always is creepy. It might be beautiful in a dark way but the beauty is shallow and just as in the case of Mark Studdock, the longer we look the more we see the twisted things.

A while ago, I created a profile picture using AI art for my X account. I wanted a cartoonish version of myself writing in a library. The result came back, looked good, and so I posted it. Then someone DM’d me asking, “what is that thing in the window behind you?” I had not noticed it but in the window behind me was a shadowy figure. It looked like a demon. Strange. Unsettling. Why did AI do that?

It is like so much of AI art. It looks right at first. But something is off. Something is creepy. People have six fingers. An extra arm. Too many teeth. So much of of A.I. art has this dark feel.

I have written in the past about the story of Loab which is a great example of this creepy theme.[2]

But C.S Lewis didn’t just strangely predict the emergence of AI art. He also has another very similar and equally terrifying prediction. 

Not so long ago, I was talking with author, Martin Erlić, about a novel he had written using A.I. We were discussing the possible outcomes of the increasingly advanced technology and Erlić stated that he expected the future of A.I. to lead everyone to increasingly live in their own A.I. generated world. A man could have an A.I. girlfriend. He could live in an A.I. generated meta-mansion. He could compete in sports against A.I. competitors. He could watch A.I. generated movies that perfectly match his tastes. He could create A.I. friends that share his sense of humor. No longer would he need to deal with the challenges of an emotional and uncaring spouse. No longer would he have to deal with unreliable, boring, or needy friends. The future of A.I. would lead to a sort of utopia where he could live the exact life he wanted to live.

Erlić’s vision of the future of A.I. struck me both as true and as terrifying. It certainly makes all the sense in the world that a well-designed A.I. metaverse would allow us to get all the ‘positive’ things we get from interacting with other people (sex, laughs, companionship, wealth, etc) without the downsides (boringness, neediness, stress, and unreliability). Of course, most people would choose this simulated utopia over the real but flawed world. And on some level, this may sound good.

But what terrified me when I reflected on this vision of the future was how closely it matched the vision of hell depicted by C.S. Lewis, in his book “The Great Divorce.” In that novel, Lewis tells the story of people who are asked to choose between heaven and hell. Those who choose heaven are forced to deal with an ultra real world where the “grass will not yield to their feet” and they must face the reality of their own failings that can’t be just brushed aside even when they would prefer that they be forgotten. But for those who choose hell, their reality is not “ultra real” but instead is perfectly constructed by their own imagination. They have unlimited resources to build whatever house they want. They can live wherever they want. They can live close to others or separate from others at will.[3]

But with unlimited resources, those who choose hell always choose isolation from other people. When they are close, they realize how unpleasant the others can be. And since they do not need them for food, housing, clothing, income, etc. these unpleasant aspects of other people are simply bothersome and unnecessary. The longer one stays in hell, the further one moves away from other people.

Lewis illustrates this ultimate state of separation with the great French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon, having been there for quite a long time, now lives many miles from all other people. In the passage below, two people discuss Napoleon’s existence.

“He’d built himself a huge house all in the Empire style—rows of windows flaming with light, though it only shows as a pin prick from where I live.”

“Did they see Napoleon?”

“That’s right. They went up and looked through one of the windows. Napoleon was there all right.”

“What was he doing?”

“Walking up and down—up and down all the time—left-right, left-right—never stopping for a moment. The two chaps watched him for about a year and he never rested. And muttering to himself all the time. ‘It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault. It was the fault of the Russians. It was the fault of the English.’ Like that all the time. Never stopped for a moment. A little, fat man and he looked kind of tired. But he didn’t seem able to stop it.”[4]

Lewis shows that getting everything you want without any interaction with other people isn’t heaven, it is hell. Napoleon didn’t have to realize his own blame. He didn’t have to deal with Josephine or the Russians or the English. They were a million miles away. But the sadness and tiredness of his existence didn’t get better with distance. It grew. The human soul needs reality – unmoving and often unpleasant — to shape us into what we are built to be. The human soul without any correction moves to a hellish isolation.

And isn’t this exactly what an A.I. generated world offers? What is it if it is not this exact vision of hell?

In both his foreseeing of AI art and the metaverse, C.S. Lewis did not make these things neutral in his stories. The art was a tool for a demonic brainwashing ritual. The creation of universes in a metaverse-style way was his picture of hell.

C.S. Lewis was a genius who foresaw many trends emerging in the middle of the 20th century that didn’t come to full fruition until the 21st century but his prophetic anticipation of artificial intelligence is uniquely impressive. And as we reflect on the meaning of AI and how we should interact with it, his vision must serve as a warning. It should cause us to pause and think. How quickly do we want to run through a door that was clearly labeled “hell” by one of the 20th century’s greatest visionaries?

Endnotes

[1] Lewis, C.S.. That hideous strength. United States, Scribner, 1996. Page 295. Note: this comparison was first brought to my attention by author and cultural commentator, Ashley Lande.

[2] AI image generator births the horrific ‘first cryptid of the latent space’ | PC Gamer, By Katie Wickens last updated September 07, 2022, https://www.pcgamer.com/ai-image-generaotr-loab-cryptid-supercomposite/

[3] Interestingly, these virtual houses, like an A.I. house, don’t actually protect them from the elements.

[4] Lewis, Clive Staples. The Great Divorce: A Dream. United Kingdom, G. Bles, 1945. Page 20.

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