Malacandra is the first planet visited in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. In Out of the Silent Planet, the first novel, Malacandra is the name used by its inhabitants for Mars.
The philologist Elwin Ransom is abducted from Earth and taken to Malacandra by the industrialist Devine and the scientist Weston. Ransom escapes and learns about the planet’s peoples, languages, and moral order.
The novel was published in 1938 and introduces Lewis’s fictional interplanetary setting. Its imaginative treatment of Mars differs from the hostile, dying-planet conventions common in earlier science fiction.
The trilogy continues with Perelandra, published in 1943, and That Hideous Strength, published in 1945. Malacandra is therefore the first destination in the series, while Perelandra is the second planet visited. The answer is distinct from the planet’s Earth name, Mars.