What is the title of C.S. Lewis’s science-fiction novel about the planet Malacandra?

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

Published in 1938, the novel follows Dr. Elwin Ransom after he is abducted and taken into space. His captors bring him to Malacandra, a planet that readers gradually recognize as Mars. There he encounters intelligent species and learns that human assumptions about civilization and morality are deeply limited.

The book is the first volume of Lewis’s Space Trilogy. It is followed by Perelandra, published in 1943, and That Hideous Strength, published in 1945. Lewis combined planetary adventure with theological and philosophical questions about humanity, technology, evil, and the possibility of life beyond Earth.

The title is sometimes confused with Perelandra because both novels belong to the same trilogy. Malacandra is central to the first book, while Perelandra is the name used for Venus in the second. Lewis’s fictional planetary names draw on older astronomical and linguistic traditions.