Which C.S. Lewis novel began the Ransom Trilogy in 1938?

Out of the Silent Planet began C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy in 1938. The science-fiction novel introduces Elwin Ransom, a philologist who is abducted and taken to the planet Mars, called Malacandra in the story.

The book combines space travel with Lewis’s interests in language, theology, morality, and medieval cosmology. Ransom discovers that Malacandra is inhabited by intelligent species and that human assumptions about alien worlds are deeply mistaken.

The next two books are Perelandra, published in 1943, and That Hideous Strength, published in 1945. They continue Ransom’s story but shift from interplanetary adventure toward spiritual conflict and a critique of uncontrolled technocratic power.

The trilogy is sometimes called the Space Trilogy or the Cosmic Trilogy. Out of the Silent Planet is not part of The Chronicles of Narnia, although both series use fantastical settings to explore ethical and religious ideas.