Out of the Silent Planet
by C.S. Lewis
First published 1938 · English · 174 pages
- Novels
- Science fiction
The first book of Lewis's space trilogy follows Ransom, a Cambridge philologist on a walking holiday, who is kidnapped by two men and taken by spaceship to Mars, called Malacandra by its inhabitants. Fearing that he is to be given up to monstrous creatures, he escapes and begins to discover a beautiful world with several intelligent species and a harmony very unlike that of Earth. He learns their language and ways of life. The novel combines adventure with ideas about science, greed and wonder, and it answers the more cynical science fiction of its day.
Quotes
And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.
You do not love the mind of your race, nor the body. Any kind of creature will please you if only it is begotten by your kind as they now are. It seems to me, Thick One, what you really love is no completed creature but the very seed itself: for that is all that is left.