The main character in C.S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet is Elwin Ransom. He is a Cambridge philologist who is kidnapped and transported from Earth to the planet Malacandra.
Ransom's linguistic training becomes central to the novel. After escaping his captors, he learns about Malacandrian cultures and begins communicating with its inhabitants. His encounters challenge the assumptions he brought from Earth and reveal a society that is not governed by the violent ambitions of his abductors.
The novel was published in 1938 as the first book of Lewis's Space Trilogy. Its later volumes are Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. Ransom returns in both sequels, where his role expands beyond that of a stranded scholar.
Readers sometimes confuse Ransom with Mark Studdock, the protagonist of That Hideous Strength, or with John, the traveler in The Pilgrim's Regress. Those characters belong to different Lewis novels.