Elwin Ransom is the protagonist of C.S. Lewis’s science-fiction trilogy.
Ransom is a philologist and university professor who travels beyond Earth in Out of the Silent Planet, the first volume of the trilogy. He later returns to the interplanetary conflict in Perelandra and That Hideous Strength.
The character’s academic background reflects Lewis’s own interests in language, literature, and medieval thought. Across the trilogy, Ransom confronts colonial violence, scientific ambition without moral limits, spiritual evil, and the possibility of intelligent life beyond Earth.
The trilogy is often called the Ransom Cycle or the Space Trilogy. Ransom’s surname can cause confusion because Lewis also wrote about other learned protagonists, but the character’s canonical full name is Elwin Ransom. The three novels were published between 1938 and 1945.