Which C.S. Lewis work is a 1942 science-fiction novel set on the planet Malacandra?
Answer
Out of the Silent Planet
Out of the Silent Planet is C.S. Lewis’s 1942 science-fiction novel set on Malacandra.
The novel follows Elwin Ransom, a Cambridge philologist who is kidnapped and taken by spaceship to Malacandra, a planet that humans call Mars. There he encounters several intelligent species and learns that Earth is known as the “silent planet” because it has become spiritually isolated.
Out of the Silent Planet is the first book in Lewis’s Space Trilogy. Its plot combines planetary adventure with philosophical and theological ideas about language, civilization, sin, and humanity’s place in the universe. Lewis drew on contemporary interest in Mars while creating an original fictional world rather than attempting a scientific account of the actual planet.
Malacandra is the inhabitants’ name for the world humans identify as Mars. The second and third trilogy novels are Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, so the trilogy’s order is a common source of confusion.