Malacandra is the fictional planet visited by talking animals in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy.
Malacandra is the inhabitants’ name for Mars in *Out of the Silent Planet* (1938), the trilogy’s first novel. Linguist and philologist Elwin Ransom is abducted from Earth and taken there, where he encounters several intelligent species and learns their languages and cultures.
Lewis uses Malacandra to challenge the idea that space travel automatically represents human progress. The planet’s societies are morally and socially ordered, while Earth—called Thulcandra, the silent planet—is isolated by its corruption and violence.
The next books move to Perelandra, Lewis’s name for Venus, and return to Earth in *That Hideous Strength*. Narnia is a separate fantasy world and is not part of this science-fiction trilogy.