What was C.S. Lewis’s first science-fiction novel?

Out of the Silent Planet was C.S. Lewis’s first science-fiction novel. Published in 1938, it begins the trilogy later known as the Space Trilogy or Ransom Trilogy.

The novel introduces Elwin Ransom, a Cambridge philologist who is abducted and taken to Malacandra, a planet commonly identified with Mars. Lewis uses the journey to explore language, colonialism, morality, and humanity’s place in the universe. The story’s alien cultures are presented through linguistic and philosophical detail rather than only through adventure.

Perelandra followed in 1943, and That Hideous Strength completed the trilogy in 1945. Lewis wrote the books partly in conversation with his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, whose own fiction also drew on myth, language, and Christian ideas.