C.S. Lewis’s central fictional character in the Space Trilogy is named Elwin Ransom.
Ransom is the protagonist of Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, and he returns in That Hideous Strength. In the first novel, he travels to Mars, known in the story as Malacandra, and encounters intelligent nonhuman species. The later books place him in increasingly cosmic and spiritual conflicts.
Lewis initially referred to the character as Ransom, and readers sometimes connect the name with the word’s ordinary meaning, although the character is not simply an autobiographical self-portrait. The trilogy combines speculative fiction, theology, philology, and criticism of unchecked scientific or political power. Its three novels were published in 1938, 1943, and 1945.