Malacandra is the fictional planet explored in C.S. Lewis's first Space Trilogy novel, Out of the Silent Planet.
The novel follows philologist Elwin Ransom after he is abducted and taken aboard a spacecraft bound for Malacandra. Lewis uses the planet to imagine an inhabited world with its own species, languages, geography, and moral history.
In the book's terminology, Earth is called Thulcandra, the “silent planet,” because it is cut off from the wider harmony of the solar system. Malacandra is Lewis's name for Mars, though the novel's Mars is a literary and theological creation rather than a realistic account of the planet's surface.
The trilogy continues with Perelandra, which is set on a version of Venus, and That Hideous Strength, which returns to Earth. These names are often confused because they belong to the same invented cosmology, but Malacandra is the destination in the first volume.