Out of the Silent Planet sprung from a conversation between C. S. Lewis and his great friend J. R. R. Tolkien. As Tolkien explained it, Lewis said to him one day, “Tollers, there is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to write some ourselves.” The two went on to agree that Lewis would try his hand at a space-travel tale and Tolkien would do something with time-travel.
The first book in C. S. Lewis’s acclaimed Space Trilogy, which continues with Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, Out of the Silent Planet begins the adventures of the remarkable Dr. Ransom. Here, that estimable man is abducted by a megalomaniacal physicist and his accomplice and taken via spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra. The two men are in need of a human sacrifice, and Dr. Ransom would seem to fit the bill. 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 mysterious and suspenseful tour de force.
“A delicious book, full of wisdom and savor.” — Commonweal
“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.” — Los Angeles Times
