The planet visited in C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet is called Malacandra. In the novel, Malacandra is Lewis’s fictional name for Mars.
The story follows Elwin Ransom, a Cambridge philologist who is abducted and taken into space by the scientist Weston and his accomplice Devine. Ransom escapes their plans and encounters intelligent inhabitants on Malacandra, learning that human assumptions about other worlds are deeply mistaken.
Lewis uses the novel to challenge the idea that space exploration must be driven by conquest or exploitation. The book combines planetary adventure, linguistic discovery, theology, and criticism of imperial ambition. Its title refers to Earth, which other worlds regard as spiritually damaged and isolated.
Out of the Silent Planet was published in 1938 and is the first volume of Lewis’s Space Trilogy. The next books are Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. Malacandra should not be confused with Perelandra, the setting of the second novel, or with Thulcandra, the trilogy’s name for Earth.