Malacandra is the fictional planet visited by Ransom in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. It is the world known to Earth as Mars in Out of the Silent Planet, the trilogy’s first novel.
The protagonist, Elwin Ransom, is abducted and taken to Malacandra by a group of Earthmen. Lewis uses the journey to combine planetary adventure with questions about language, morality, colonialism, and humanity’s place in the universe.
Malacandra is not the same setting as Perelandra. Perelandra is the planet featured in the second novel, while the third book, That Hideous Strength, returns to Earth. The series therefore moves among distinct worlds rather than treating all three books as one planet-bound story.
Out of the Silent Planet was published in 1938. Lewis’s invented planetary names draw on the novels’ own fictional language and worldview, while the books also reflect contemporary interest in science fiction and space travel.