Which C.S. Lewis work is the first novel in his Space Trilogy?

Out of the Silent Planet is the first novel in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. It was published in 1938 and introduces the philologist Elwin Ransom.

Ransom is kidnapped and taken from Earth to Malacandra, the planet humans call Mars. There he encounters intelligent species and learns that Earth is known as Thulcandra, the “silent planet,” because it is cut off from the wider harmony of the solar system. The novel combines adventure with Lewis’s reflections on language, science, colonialism, and Christian cosmology.

The two later books are Perelandra, published in 1943, and That Hideous Strength, published in 1945. They continue Ransom’s story but move to different settings and conflicts. Together, the novels are often called the Space Trilogy, although Lewis’s own titles are not numbered in the books.

The work is sometimes mistaken for straightforward planetary science fiction. Its speculative worlds are important, but its central concerns include moral choice, human arrogance, and the spiritual consequences of treating other beings as objects.