Elwin Ransom is C.S. Lewis’s fictional planet-traveling protagonist in the Space Trilogy.
Ransom first appears in Out of the Silent Planet, published in 1938, where he is abducted and taken to Mars, known in the novel as Malacandra. He is a philologist whose knowledge of languages becomes crucial as he encounters the planet’s intelligent species and learns that Earth is viewed as a fallen world.
He returns in Perelandra, published in 1943, and That Hideous Strength, published in 1945. The trilogy shifts from interplanetary adventure toward spiritual conflict, scientific ambition, political power, and the moral consequences of human choices. Ransom’s role develops across the series rather than remaining a conventional action hero.
Mark Studdock is an important character in the third novel, which makes him a plausible confusion. Digory Kirke and Peter Pevensie belong to Lewis’s Narnia stories, not the Space Trilogy.