Perelandra is the C.S. Lewis science-fiction novel set partly on the planet Perelandra.
Published in 1943, it is the second novel in Lewis’s Space Trilogy. The story follows the philologist Elwin Ransom, who travels from Earth to Perelandra, a world also called Venus in the series’ planetary framework. There he encounters a new human couple and a struggle involving temptation, freedom, and the future of the planet.
The novel’s setting is not a realistic account of Venus as understood by modern planetary science. Lewis uses an imagined world to explore theological and moral ideas through speculative fiction. Its lush oceanic environment contrasts strongly with the harsher, more conventional planetary setting of the trilogy’s first volume.
Perelandra is sometimes confused with Out of the Silent Planet, which takes place mainly on Malacandra, or Mars. That distinction identifies the trilogy’s second volume: Malacandra belongs to the first novel, while Perelandra is the world visited in the second.