Elwin Ransom is the protagonist of C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. The character is usually identified by his surname, Ransom, across the three novels.
Ransom first appears in Out of the Silent Planet, published in 1938. He is a philologist who is abducted and taken to Malacandra, Lewis’s name for Mars. The later books, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, expand the story from planetary adventure into a broader conflict involving science, morality, and spiritual forces.
The trilogy is also called the Ransom Trilogy because of its central character. It is sometimes grouped with science fiction, theological fiction, and planetary romance.
Lewis’s friend J.R.R. Tolkien influenced his interest in imaginative literature, while Lewis’s own academic knowledge of language and medieval ideas shaped Ransom’s profession and the trilogy’s themes.