Elwin Ransom is the protagonist of C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet.
Published in 1938, Out of the Silent Planet follows Ransom, a philologist who is kidnapped and taken to Malacandra, the planet commonly identified with Mars. He escapes his captors and encounters intelligent inhabitants whose society challenges the assumptions of the men who brought him there.
Ransom is also the central character of Lewis’s Space Trilogy. The later novels, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, continue his involvement in conflicts involving other worlds, science, morality, and spiritual powers.
Readers may confuse Ransom with Mark Studdock, the protagonist of That Hideous Strength, or with characters from Lewis’s other fiction. Orual belongs to Till We Have Faces, while Digory Kirke belongs to the Narnia books. Elwin Ransom is the specific answer for Lewis’s first space novel.