What is the title of C.S. Lewis’s 1938 science-fiction novel about Ransom’s journey to Malacandra?

C.S. Lewis’s 1938 science-fiction novel about Ransom’s journey to Malacandra is Out of the Silent Planet.

Out of the Silent Planet is the first book of Lewis’s Space Trilogy. Its protagonist, Elwin Ransom, is abducted from Earth and taken to Malacandra, a planet that humans identify with Mars. There he encounters intelligent species and learns that Earth is regarded as a damaged or “silent” world.

The novel was published in 1938, before the two later volumes: Perelandra in 1943 and That Hideous Strength in 1945. Lewis used planetary adventure to explore language, morality, science, colonial ambition, and the possibility of intelligent life beyond Earth.

The trilogy is also called the Ransom Trilogy because Ransom is its recurring central character. Readers sometimes mix up the titles of the second and third books, but Out of the Silent Planet is the series opener and the work that introduces Malacandra and Ransom’s interplanetary journey.