God, what do I even say. It's perfect, divine, transcendental, sublime. The most important book I've read in a very long time. I miss reading it, and I'm sad I'll never read it for the first time again.

There are so many beautiful images, images I'll never forget. Satan, slowly climbing back to life in the lake of fire. The Satanic Horde assembling in Hell. Satan, half-flying half-drowning as he traverses the primordial Chaos, or Satan flying along the earth's diurnal line, in perpetual twilight. Adam coming up Eve sleeping, only to see Satan as a cormorant whispering in her ear.

It is a deeply, deeply imaginative work. I'm sure everything that can be said about Milton has been said, but I think this easily qualifies as Fantasy/Sci-Fi. It has the same bravery and freedom of imagination that the best works in that genre have (Philip K. Dick, Tolkien, Vance). Milton is inventing all throughout. He is creating worlds, images, mythologies. Early in the poem, Satan comes across his monstrosity of a daughter Sin, whose lower half is made of wild dogs who gnaw at her insides and also impregnate her. She has given birth to a son, Death, a terrifying ghost who hungers for the living. It is a beautiful scene: Satan, just previously Lucifer the paragon of beauty, sees this abomination and feels not disgust or hatred, but sympathy and love for her and his grandson. It is hard not to love Satan. But here Milton has created an entirely new mythology! Satan, the father of Sin, the grandfather of death, who guards the gates of Hell! And it feels as eternal as anything from the Ancient Greeks. You read this thing for the first time and it feels like you've known it forever, like you're remembering it from a previous life. Tolkien, another master linguist, is the only other writer I known who could create these mythologies from thin air.

And like a great Sci-Fi writer, Milton is incredibly industrious, to the point of fussiness. At one point an angel eats. An angel, eating? Why yes, and Milton will now describe the digestive process of celestial beings. Jesus makes the newly ashamed Adam and Eve two coats from pelts. But hold on a sec: Where did he get those pelts? The earth doesn't know death yet! Again, Milton goes out of his way to explain that at this time, before the Fall, mammals actually shed their fur like insects molting! My favorite little Miltonism is his repeated (I counted four or five times) refusal to take a side on the Copernican/Ptolemaic debate, explaining how whatever thing he is describing is equally valid in either astronomical system. And, let us not forget, this is all being done in beautiful blank verse.

Speaking of Tolkien, I couldn't help but thinking Saruman's industrialization of Isengard was influenced by Milton. Satan, in an amazing scene, invents gunpowder and firearms to help in his battle in heaven. The whole battle in heaven is sublime, and brings us to the two real creeps of this story, the villains by my reckoning: God and Jesus. God is a jealous and distant tyrant, demanding love freely given. He is a sadistic child. But Jesus is a demon, an alien. At the height of the battle, Jesus rides out in a deeply hallucinogenic chariot, laser beams and lighting shooting in every direction, a fractal cloud of Cherubim following him. It is such a horrifying sight that he routs Satan's legions to the gates of Heaven and pursues them into Hell. Jesus is a scary figure. All of heaven is weird and alien and scary, while Satan and his horde are deeply human.

And the humans, all two of them, are beautiful. Adam is kind of a dope, a real nerd who wants to know everything about the universe and who leads his hot wife Eve in spontaneous praise for the Lord. Eve is much more independent, and I can't help but think that Milton is more sympathetic to Eve than Adam. Their fall is done in such a beautiful way: After both eating the fruit, they become deeply aroused and have what can only be described as "very good sex." But then, in the post-coital embrace, the lights go out of the room. Suddenly there is a slight panic, a slight fear, slight shame. The room gets cold. It is like the onset of a panic attack. It's the sheen slowly fading.

I could go on forever. Milton is a God, and I will now read everything he wrote.

Rating: Five Satans