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

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

Published in 1938, the book introduces Elwin Ransom, a philologist who is kidnapped and taken aboard a spacecraft. The destination is Malacandra, Lewis’s fictional name for Mars. Ransom escapes and encounters intelligent species whose societies challenge the assumptions of his captors.

The novel is the first book of Lewis’s Space Trilogy. Its successors are Perelandra, published in 1943, and That Hideous Strength, published in 1945. The trilogy combines planetary adventure with questions about language, morality, technology, and humanity’s spiritual condition.

Readers sometimes confuse the title of the first novel with the name of its planet. Malacandra is the fictional Mars setting, while Out of the Silent Planet is the book’s title. Ransom returns in the two later volumes.