Out of the Silent Planet

Out of the Silent Planet, science-fiction novel by C.S. Lewis, published in 1938, that can be read as an independent work or as the first book in a trilogy that includes Perelandra (1943) and That Hideous Strength (1945). Out of the Silent Planet gives voice to Lewis’s concerns about the secularization of society and affirms that a return to traditional religious belief is the only means of its salvation.

Lewis, an early fan of H.G. Wells, said in a letter that with Out of the Silent Planet he was “trying to redeem for genuinely imaginative [and spiritual] purposes the form popularly known…as ‘science-fiction.’ ” The book was influenced particularly by Wells’s The First Men in the Moon (1901), which Lewis received as a Christmas present from his father in 1908 and “enjoyed…very much.” Lewis’s story, like Wells’s, starts with a scientist, an entrepreneur, and a spherical vehicle for space travel. Lewis added a third traveler, Elwin Ransom, an academic who combines characteristics of Lewis and his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, and changed the destination to a planet, Malacandra (Mars). Ransom is kidnapped by the scientist (Edward Rolles Weston, seeking to colonize Malacandra as a way to preserve the human species) and the entrepreneur (Dick Devine, interested only in the gold abundant on the planet), who believe they must take Ransom (as ransom) with them to Malacandra.

From his boyhood Lewis was attracted to the idea of other planets, and, like Wells, he delighted in describing the geographies and cultures of the worlds his travelers encounter. But Lewis’s Malacandra is very different from Wells’s Moon. After the travelers arrive on Malacandra, Ransom escapes and spends several months living with the hrossa—large animal-like creatures who are the planet’s farmers, fishermen, and poets and are one of three sentient species on the planet: the others are the séroni (scientists and philosophers) and the pfifltriggi (craftsmen and artists). In contrast to Wells’s modern industrial subterranean lunar society, Malacandra is premodern, still in an “old stone age.” It is nonhierarchical, with no rulers or governmental structures, and it is cooperative rather than competitive, unafflicted by greed, war, or ambition. Ransom initially judges Malacandra by Earth’s standards and expectations, but he eventually concludes that Earth’s standards are deficient in comparison with Malacandra’s and that there is much his world could learn from theirs. Such social criticism is an important theme in the book.

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Ransom eventually learns that Malacandra is an unfallen world filled with spiritual vitality. The planet is cathedral-like, with elongated vegetation and rock formations (resulting from the planet’s light gravitational pull) symbolically pointing heavenward. He learns that the God worshipped on the unfallen Malacandra is the same God he worships on Earth, and he also learns that each planet has a guardian angel (an Oyarsa) whose role is to protect and oversee it. Ransom meets the Oyarsa of Malacandra, from whom he learns about ancient interplanetary warfare similar to what the 17th-century English poet John Milton describes in his Paradise Lost: the Oyarsa of Thulcandra (Earth) rebelled against the “Old One” (God) and, after a fierce conflict, was conquered and thrown back to Thulcandra. It thereafter was isolated from the rest of the universe and referred to as the “silent planet.” The Malacandrians know nothing about it except that the Old One did not abandon it but sent Maleldil (Christ) to rescue it. Lewis thus slipped the central elements of Christianity into the book, doing it so subtly that few early reviewers noticed. (He concluded, in a letter, that “any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people’s minds under cover of romance without their knowing it.”)

Weston and Devine are compelled to return to Earth, and Ransom chooses to accompany them. His journey in Out of the Silent Planet, though it can serve as a stand-alone story, also equips him for the adventures he will experience in the second and third volumes of the trilogy: he has learned “Old Solar,” the language used throughout the universe except on the silent planet; he has accepted “otherness” by meeting and living with beings very different from his own species; and he has overcome his fear of death and learned to obey and put his trust in Maleldil. Each of these lessons serves as preparation for what lies ahead.