Which C.S. Lewis science-fiction novel is the first book of his Space Trilogy?

Out of the Silent Planet is the first book of C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy.

Published in 1938, Out of the Silent Planet introduces the philologist Elwin Ransom, who is abducted and taken to Mars, known in the novel as Malacandra. There he encounters intelligent species and learns that Earth is viewed as a spiritually damaged world. The story combines planetary adventure with philosophical and theological ideas.

The novel was followed by Perelandra in 1943 and That Hideous Strength in 1945. Together, the three books form the Space Trilogy, although their settings and narrative concerns develop considerably from one volume to the next.

Readers sometimes mistake Out of the Silent Planet for a straightforward prediction of later space exploration. It is better understood as a work of imaginative science fiction written partly in response to the interplanetary fiction popular in Lewis’s era. Its Mars is a literary and moral world, not a scientific account of the planet.