Which novel completes C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy?

That Hideous Strength completes C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. Published in 1945, it follows Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, but its main setting is Earth rather than another planet.

The novel centers on Mark and Jane Studdock and the sinister National Institute of Coordinated Experiments, usually called NICE. Lewis combines science fiction, satire, Arthurian material, and Christian philosophical concerns while imagining a technocratic organization seeking control over human life.

Out of the Silent Planet takes the reader to Mars, called Malacandra, and Perelandra takes place on Venus, called Perelandra. The third book shifts back to Earth and brings the trilogy’s cosmic conflict into a modern social and political environment.

The phrase “Space Trilogy” can mislead readers because the final volume contains relatively little conventional space travel. It belongs to the trilogy through its shared universe, supernatural conflict, and continuing concerns about humanity, technology, and spiritual power.