Out of the silent planet

158 pages

English language

Published 1996 by Scribner Classics.

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3 stars (1 review)

The first book in Lewis's Space Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet tells the story of Dr. Elwin Ransom, a philologist who likes to explore the English countryside on foot. Seeking out a place to stay the night, he ends up at the estate of a colleague who is away in London. However, the house is not empty. Ransom stumbles upon the plot of a megalomaniacal scientist and his collaborator, who just happens to be an old schoolmate of Ransom's. Drugged, kidnapped, and wisked away in the scientists rocket to the planet Malacandra where he is to serve as a human sacrifice, Dr. Ransom escapes into the strange Malacandran wilderness pursued by his kidnappers and abandoning his hopes of returning to Earth.

Ransom discovers that the inhabitants of Malacandra are not what his kidnappers believed them to be. In his adventures in the often strangely beautiful, sometimes dangerous, and sometimes …

28 editions

Good fantasy in spite of itself, looking forward to the second in the triology

3 stars

I don't really like C.S. Lewis in general. I am reading this series because a friend recommended it to me -- I am particularly interested in the depiction of angels (in relation to a project I am working on).

I think this first novel works pretty well as "science fantasy" but it still is unsubtle and didactic like other stuff I have read by him.

I think stories about space exploration that were written before the space age can be pleasantly whimsical in how they depict it without any of the knowledge that we take for granted about space now. Would it even be possible to write about it in the same way now?

The second novel (Perelandra) sounds really good based on the synopsis -- and this first one laid out enough of a foundation for me to continue with the trilogy.

Subjects

  • Ransom, Elwin (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
  • Life on other planets -- Fiction
  • College teachers -- Fiction
  • Good and evil -- Fiction
  • Philologists -- Fiction
  • Linguists -- Fiction