Mars is the destination of Ransom’s first journey in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy.
In Out of the Silent Planet, published in 1938, the English philologist Elwin Ransom is kidnapped and taken aboard a spacecraft to Malacandra. Malacandra is Lewis’s fictional name for Mars, and the novel’s setting combines planetary adventure with linguistic, philosophical, and theological ideas.
Ransom discovers that Earth is known as Thulcandra, the silent planet, because it has become isolated from the wider community of intelligent life. The inhabitants of Malacandra include several species, each with its own culture and language.
The next two books move to different settings. Perelandra, published in 1943, takes Ransom to the planet Venus, while That Hideous Strength, published in 1945, returns much of the action to Earth. Therefore, Venus is the destination of the second journey, not the first.