Which C.S. Lewis novel opens his science-fiction trilogy?

Out of the Silent Planet opens C.S. Lewis’s science-fiction trilogy. Published in 1938, it introduces philologist Elwin Ransom, who is abducted and taken to the planet Malacandra.

Ransom’s journey brings him into contact with intelligent species and a wider cosmic order that challenges the assumptions of his captors. The novel combines planetary adventure with Lewis’s concerns about language, colonialism, morality, and humanity’s place in the universe.

The two later books are Perelandra, published in 1943, and That Hideous Strength, published in 1945. Although the trilogy is often grouped as Christian science fiction, the books differ in setting and style: the first is planetary adventure, while the final volume moves largely into an Earth-based modern society.