Which C.S. Lewis novel begins the author’s Space Trilogy?

Out of the Silent Planet begins C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy.

Published in 1938, the novel follows Dr. Elwin Ransom after he is abducted and taken to Malacandra, a planet that humans on Earth call Mars. Ransom discovers that the planet contains several intelligent species and a moral order very different from the assumptions of his captors.

The second book is Perelandra, published in 1943, and the third is That Hideous Strength, published in 1945. The trilogy combines planetary adventure, Christian theology, medieval ideas about the cosmos, and criticism of scientific ambition detached from moral responsibility.

Lewis originally titled the first book The Silent Planet. The published title’s “silent” description refers to Earth’s spiritual isolation in the wider inhabited universe, rather than to a lack of sound.