C.S. Lewis’s first published novel, Out of the Silent Planet, was released in 1938.
The book is the opening volume of Lewis’s Space Trilogy, a set of imaginative science-fiction novels concerned with language, morality, temptation, and humanity’s place in the universe. Its protagonist, Elwin Ransom, is transported to the planet Malacandra, which is identified with Mars.
Lewis wrote the novel partly in response to what he saw as the moral and imaginative limitations of much contemporary science fiction. The story combines interplanetary adventure with theological and philosophical ideas, but it is not a direct retelling of Christian doctrine.
The later novels in the trilogy are Perelandra, published in 1943, and That Hideous Strength, published in 1945. Out of the Silent Planet therefore marks both Lewis’s debut as a novelist and the beginning of one of his most distinctive fictional series.