What is the title of the second novel in C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy?

Perelandra is the second novel in C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy.

Published in 1943, Perelandra follows philologist Elwin Ransom on a journey to the planet Venus, called Perelandra in the novel. There he encounters a young world facing a moral and spiritual crisis. The book develops Lewis’s interest in planetary mythology, theology, temptation, and the consequences of choices made at the beginning of a civilization.

The trilogy’s first novel is Out of the Silent Planet, published in 1938, and its third is That Hideous Strength, published in 1945. The books are linked by Ransom and by a cosmic conflict, but their settings and styles differ substantially. Perelandra is therefore not the trilogy’s opening title or its conclusion.

Lewis wrote the novels during a period when science fiction often focused on technological progress and interplanetary adventure. His trilogy uses those conventions to examine religious and philosophical questions. The planet’s name also explains why the work is sometimes discussed under the broader label of Lewis’s “space trilogy.”