Which C.S. Lewis book contains the science-fiction world of Malacandra?

Out of the Silent Planet contains C.S. Lewis’s science-fiction world of Malacandra.

Published in 1938, Out of the Silent Planet is the first novel in Lewis’s Space Trilogy. Its protagonist, the philologist Elwin Ransom, is kidnapped and taken to Mars, which the inhabitants call Malacandra. There he encounters intelligent species and begins to understand the planet’s moral and spiritual order.

Lewis used the novel to challenge popular science-fiction ideas about conquest, racial hierarchy, and the supposed inevitability of human violence. The story’s extraterrestrial setting also allowed him to explore Christian themes without placing the action on Earth.

The later trilogy novels are Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. A common mix-up is to identify Malacandra with Perelandra, but Perelandra is the name Lewis gives to Venus in the second book. Malacandra is specifically the Mars-like planet visited in the opening novel.