C.S. Lewis’s first Space Trilogy novel, Out of the Silent Planet, is set partly on Mars.
The 1938 novel follows Elwin Ransom, a philologist who is abducted and taken into space aboard a spacecraft bound for the planet Lewis calls Malacandra. Malacandra is identified with Mars, but Lewis gives the planet its own cultures, languages, species, and moral history rather than treating it as a simple version of the real planet.
Ransom learns that the inhabitants of Malacandra include several intelligent species living in cooperation. The novel contrasts their society with the fear, violence, and imperial ambition of the human characters who take Ransom there. Language and translation are especially important because Ransom’s academic expertise becomes central to his survival.
The book was followed by Perelandra in 1943 and That Hideous Strength in 1945. Together, the three novels form Lewis’s Space Trilogy, also called the Ransom Trilogy after its main human protagonist.