Mars is the destination in C.S. Lewis’s novel Out of the Silent Planet.
Published in 1938, Out of the Silent Planet follows the philologist Elwin Ransom after he is kidnapped and taken aboard a spacecraft. The voyage carries him from Earth to Mars, which the inhabitants call Malacandra. Lewis uses the novel to imagine a world with intelligent species, distinct languages, and a moral history different from Earth’s.
The book is the first volume of Lewis’s Space Trilogy. Perelandra, published in 1943, is set on Venus, while That Hideous Strength, published in 1945, returns to Earth. Confusing the trilogy’s destinations can lead to the wrong planet because each volume develops a different setting and conflict.
Lewis wrote the novel partly as a response to what he regarded as pessimistic or morally troubling trends in some contemporary science fiction. Its Mars is not simply a battlefield or a barren landscape: it is a populated world with cultures, communities, and spiritual dimensions.