What is the title of C.S. Lewis’s 1938 science-fiction novel featuring Elwin Ransom?

C.S. Lewis’s 1938 science-fiction novel featuring Elwin Ransom is Out of the Silent Planet.

Out of the Silent Planet is the first novel in Lewis’s Space Trilogy, also called the Cosmic Trilogy. Its protagonist, Dr. Elwin Ransom, is kidnapped and taken to the planet Malacandra, which humans know as Mars. The novel combines space travel with philosophical and theological themes.

Lewis wrote the book partly in response to what he regarded as morally troubling trends in some contemporary science fiction, especially stories that treated space colonization as an excuse for conquest. His imagined planetary societies therefore emphasize questions about language, culture, sin, and redemption.

The two later novels in the trilogy are Perelandra, published in 1943, and That Hideous Strength, published in 1945. Readers sometimes confuse the trilogy’s titles because Ransom appears in all three books, but Out of the Silent Planet is specifically the first installment and the one that introduces his journey to Malacandra.