Out of the Silent Planet was published by John Lane at The Bodley Head in 1938 and is the first volume of Lewis’s Space Trilogy (or Cosmic Trilogy, or Ransom Trilogy) — a sequence of science fiction novels that reimagines space travel as a theological adventure. Dr. Elwin Ransom, a Cambridge philologist (modeled partly on Tolkien), is drugged and taken to Malacandra (Mars) by two villains — Weston, a physicist, and Devine, a greedy businessman — who intend to hand him over to the planet’s ruler as a sacrifice.
The Novel
Malacandra is not the dead, barren Mars of scientific expectation but a living world inhabited by three intelligent species: the hrossa (poets and farmers), the séroni (scholars and scientists), and the pfifltriggi (craftsmen and artists). They live under the benevolent rule of Oyarsa, an angelic being (an eldil) who governs the planet. Ransom discovers that Earth — Thulcandra, “the silent planet” — is silent because its Oyarsa (Satan, the “Bent One”) rebelled against Maleldil (God) and Earth has been quarantined from the rest of creation ever since.
Lewis uses the science fiction format to defamiliarize Christian theology: seen from the outside, from the perspective of unfallen beings, the Christian narrative of Fall, Rebellion, and Redemption looks strange and terrible. Weston, who represents scientific materialism, is the real alien — his willingness to exploit and destroy other beings in the name of “progress” is far more monstrous than anything on Malacandra.
Themes
The goodness of creation — Malacandra is beautiful, ordered, and alive. Lewis’s interplanetary travel is not escapist but sacramental: other worlds are also God’s worlds.
Scientism — Weston’s speech to Oyarsa, in which he justifies the exploitation of Malacandra in the name of human survival and progress, is Lewis’s most devastating satire of scientific materialism.
Language — Ransom is a philologist, and much of the novel’s pleasure lies in his discovery and learning of Old Solar, the language spoken across the solar system. Lewis, himself a formidable linguist, was fascinated by the relationship between language and thought.
Collecting Out of the Silent Planet
First edition (John Lane / The Bodley Head, London, 1938): Dark blue cloth with gilt lettering. Dust jacket.
Market values (with dust jacket):
- Fine in dust jacket: $10,000–$25,000
- Very good in dust jacket: $4,000–$10,000
- Without dust jacket: $800–$2,000
First American edition (Macmillan, New York, 1943): $1,500–$4,000 in dust jacket.
The small first printing (1,200 copies) and the intervening war make this one of Lewis’s scarcest first editions.