Malacandra is the fictional planet commonly identified with Mars in C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet.
In the 1938 novel, Elwin Ransom is taken from Earth to Malacandra by Weston and Devine. Ransom’s captors expect to exploit the planet, but his experience there exposes him to intelligent cultures and a moral order that differs sharply from the assumptions of his abductors.
The planet contains several intelligent species, including the hrossa, séroni, and pfifltriggi. Lewis uses their languages and social structures to explore how human ideas about civilization, progress, and superiority can be mistaken.
Malacandra is not simply a renamed version of the real Mars. Lewis gives it an imaginative geography and inhabitants of his own. The later novels move to other worlds: Perelandra is associated with Venus, while That Hideous Strength returns much of its action to Earth.