Out of the Silent Planet - (Space Trilogy) by C S Lewis

About the Book

In the first book of C.S. Lewis's legendary science fiction trilogy, Dr. Ransom is kidnapped and spirited by spaceship to the mysterious red planet of Malandra. He escapes and goes on the run, jeopardizing both his chances of ever returning to Earth and his very life. First published in 1943, this classic interplanetary fantasy continues to delight readers around the world.

Book Synopsis

From C.S. Lewis, the acclaimed author of The Chronicles of Narnia, comes the first book in the classic science fiction Space Trilogy following the resourceful Dr. Ransom as he is abducted and taken by spaceship to Mars.

Written during the dark hours immediately before and during World War II, C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, of which Out of the Silent Planet is the first volume, stands alongside such works as Albert Camus's The Plague and George Orwell's 1984 as a timeless classic, beloved by succeeding generations as much for the sheer wonder of its storytelling as for the significance of its moral concerns.

While searching for a place to rest for the night, Dr. Elwin Ransom is abducted by a megalomaniacal physicist and his accomplice and taken to the red planet of Malacandra (Mars) as a human sacrifice for the alien creatures that live there. Once on the planet, however, Ransom eludes his captors, risking his life and his chances of returning to Earth, becoming a stranger in a land that is enchanting in its difference from Earth and instructive in its similarity.

First published in 1943, Out of the Silent Planet remains a magnificent and suspenseful tour de force in which epic battles are fought between the forces of light and those of darkness. It is the incredible beginning to C.S. Lewis's spectacular Space Trilogy, which also includes Perelandra and That Hideous Strength.

Review Quotes

Los Angeles Times Lewis, perhaps more than any other twentieth-century writer, forced those who listened to him and read his works to come to terms with their own philosophical presuppositions.

The New Yorker If wit and wisdom, style and scholarship are requisites to passage through the pearly gates, Mr. Lewis will be among the angels.

About the Author

C.S. Lewis was a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature at Oxford and Cambridge universities who wrote more than thirty books in his lifetime, including The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Mere Christianity. He died in 1963