C.S. Lewis published Out of the Silent Planet in 1938.
Out of the Silent Planet is the first novel in Lewis’s Space Trilogy, a work of speculative fiction that combines planetary adventure with philosophical and theological ideas. Its protagonist, Elwin Ransom, is kidnapped and taken to Mars, which the inhabitants call Malacandra. The story contrasts destructive human ambition with civilizations that live in harmony with their moral and spiritual order.
The novel appeared in 1938, followed by Perelandra in 1943 and That Hideous Strength in 1945. The trilogy is sometimes called the Ransom Trilogy because Ransom is its central character. Lewis wrote it partly in response to the space-travel fiction of H.G. Wells and to what he saw as the moral assumptions behind some modern science fiction.
Readers sometimes mistake the trilogy’s publication order for its fictional chronology, but Out of the Silent Planet is both the first published installment and the opening Ransom adventure.