Elwin Ransom visits Malacandra first in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy.
Malacandra is the name used in the trilogy for the planet commonly known as Mars. Ransom travels there in Out of the Silent Planet, the first volume, which was published in 1938. He is abducted by Devine and Weston, who intend to offer a human sacrifice, but he escapes and encounters the planet’s intelligent inhabitants.
The novel presents Malacandra as a world with several rational species and a rich moral and spiritual order. Ransom learns its languages and customs rather than simply treating the planet as an exotic backdrop. The story’s ideas challenge the assumption that advanced science automatically produces moral wisdom.
The later books take Ransom to Perelandra, Lewis’s name for Venus, and back to Earth, called Thulcandra. Because the trilogy uses invented planetary names, readers sometimes confuse the order or identify Malacandra with a fictional planet unrelated to Mars.