Title: Out of the Silent Planet
Description: 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 surprisingly familiar Malacandra and its inhabitants, Ransom uncovers information about the larger universe and Earth's place that suggest he has as much to discover about his home planet as he does about the alien Malacandra.
Subjects: Linguists, Elwin Ransom (Fictitious character), Readers, Philologists, Science fiction, College teachers, Life on other planets, Fiction, Good and evil, Fantasy fiction, Interplanetary voyages, Reading Level-Grade 9, Reading Level-Grade 11, Reading Level-Grade 10, Reading Level-Grade 12, English Science fiction, British and irish fiction (fictional works by one author), Fiction, science fiction, general, Ransom, elwin (fictitious character), fiction, College teachers, fiction, Space flight, Extraterrestrial beings
Time periods: 1950-