Elwin Ransom is the protagonist of C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet.
Ransom is a Cambridge philologist who is kidnapped during a walking trip and taken aboard a spacecraft bound for Mars. In the novel, Mars is known as Malacandra, and Ransom gradually learns about its languages, cultures, and intelligent inhabitants.
The book was published in 1938 and is the first novel in Lewis’s Space Trilogy. Its themes include colonialism, language, scientific ambition, morality, and humanity’s place in the cosmos. The later novels are Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, which continue the wider speculative and theological concerns rather than simply repeating the first book’s plot.
Readers sometimes confuse Ransom with characters from the later novels, especially Mark Studdock from That Hideous Strength. Ransom’s profession is also important: he is a philologist, and his attention to language helps him understand Malacandran society.