Which C.S. Lewis novel features the space-traveling philologist Elwin Ransom?

C.S. Lewis’s novel Out of the Silent Planet features the space-traveling philologist Elwin Ransom. Published in 1938, it begins when Ransom is kidnapped and taken aboard a spacecraft bound for Malacandra, a planet humans call Mars.

Ransom’s knowledge of languages becomes crucial after he reaches the alien world. The novel presents Malacandra as inhabited by several intelligent species and uses its planetary setting to explore ethics, language, colonial attitudes, and humanity’s spiritual condition.

Out of the Silent Planet is the first book of Lewis’s space trilogy, also called the Ransom Trilogy. Perelandra is the second volume and takes Ransom to another world, while That Hideous Strength returns the conflict to Earth. The Great Divorce is a separate theological fantasy, not a space novel.