Which C.S. Lewis novel features the alien world of Malacandra?

Out of the Silent Planet is the C.S. Lewis novel featuring the alien world of Malacandra. Published in 1938, it is the first book in Lewis’s Space Trilogy, which combines science fiction with religious and philosophical themes.

The protagonist, Elwin Ransom, is a philologist who is abducted and taken to Malacandra, a planet later identified with Mars. There he encounters intelligent species and learns that the planet’s societies differ sharply from the assumptions of the men who brought him there.

Lewis used the story to challenge popular science-fiction ideas about conquest, evolution, and extraterrestrial life. The book’s title reflects Earth’s spiritual condition as a “silent” or fallen world, rather than merely describing astronomy.

The next two books are Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. Perelandra is also a planetary name, but it is the title of the second novel, not the world visited in Lewis’s first space adventure.