Malacandra is the fictional planet central to C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet.
Published in 1938, Out of the Silent Planet follows Dr. Elwin Ransom after he is abducted and taken into space. The planet he reaches is called Malacandra by its inhabitants; humans on Earth identify it with Mars. The novel presents Malacandra as a world inhabited by several intelligent species rather than as an empty, hostile planet.
The book begins Lewis’s Space Trilogy, which blends planetary romance, Christian theology, linguistic speculation and criticism of colonial exploitation. Its Earth is called Thulcandra, meaning the silent planet, because it has become cut off from the harmony of the wider cosmos.
A common mix-up is confusing Malacandra with Perelandra, the planet featured in the trilogy’s second novel. Lewis used both invented names and traditional astronomical associations, but Malacandra is the distinctive setting of the first volume.