Mars is the destination in the first novel of C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy.
The novel is Out of the Silent Planet, published in 1938. Its protagonist, Elwin Ransom, is abducted from Earth and taken to Mars, which the inhabitants call Malacandra. On the planet, he encounters intelligent species and learns that Earth is known as Thulcandra, the “silent planet,” because it is cut off from the wider cosmic community.
Lewis wrote the trilogy partly in conversation with scientific romance and space fiction. The other two books are Perelandra, published in 1943, and That Hideous Strength, published in 1945. The trilogy is sometimes mistaken for straightforward planetary adventure, but it also explores language, morality, technology, and the consequences of treating other beings as objects. Mars here is a literary setting rather than a scientifically realistic account of the planet.