In C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy, Perelandra is the planet Venus.
Perelandra is the second novel in Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy, also known as the Space Trilogy. It follows Elwin Ransom after his journey to Mars, called Malacandra in the first book. In the second novel, Ransom travels to Perelandra, a world corresponding to Venus, where he encounters a newly created human society and a struggle involving temptation and obedience.
Lewis does not present Venus as a realistic astronomical travel destination. His planetary names and settings belong to a theological and imaginative universe influenced by medieval cosmology, Christian symbolism, and speculative fiction. The novel’s Venus is therefore an allegorical world rather than a description of the actual planet’s hostile environment.
A common mistake is to identify Perelandra with Mars because both planets appear in the trilogy. Malacandra is Lewis’s name for Mars, while Perelandra is his name for Venus. The book Perelandra was published in 1943.