C.S. Lewis’s fictional hero Elwin’s surname is Ransom. Dr. Elwin Ransom is the central character of Lewis’s space trilogy, which includes Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength.
Ransom is a philologist and university academic who is drawn into interplanetary and spiritual conflicts. In the first novel, he is taken to Malacandra, the planet that humans call Mars. Later books place him in further struggles involving Earth, other worlds, and competing visions of human power.
The character’s name is sometimes confused with Mark Studdock, who becomes important in That Hideous Strength, or with Lewis himself. Ransom is not a direct self-portrait, although the trilogy uses Lewis’s interests in language, medieval cosmology, theology, and the dangers of technocratic ambition.