Out of the Silent Planet

"*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...*" - Hyoi in *Out of the Silent Planet*

***Out of the Silent Planet*** is a science fiction novel by Irish author C. S. Lewis, published in 1938 by John Lane, the Bodley Head. Five years later it was published in the U.S. (MacMillan, 1943). Two sequels, *Perelandra* and *That Hideous Strength*, were published in 1943 and 1945 respectively, completing the so-called Cosmic Trilogy or *The Space Trilogy*, along with posthumously published *The Dark Tower* (1977) of uncertain origin.

*Out of the Silent Planet* discusses the moral implications of space travel, of contact between cultures and the abuse of science. It inverts some of the tropes of previous science fiction, with humans effectively invading Mars, rather than vice versa. While this theme is common in science fiction today, it was comparatively rare at the time and very progressive. *Out of the Silent Planet* is the first outing of Dr. Elwin Ransom who features throughout the series. There are also some elements which foreshadow Lewis' later fiction, including *The Chronicles of Narnia*.

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## Plot

The story starts out on Earth, by following an unnamed pedestrian taking a walking tour through the English countryside, near the towns of Sterk and Much Nadderby. The man is later identified as Dr. Elwin Ransom, a linguistics professor. He is looking for a place to stay the night and stumbles upon a small cottage where a woman is desperately waiting for her son to return. Ransom agrees to help her in hopes he might be able to stay the night at The Rise, the estate where the woman's son works.

At the front door, Ransom hears shouting and struggling inside. When he hurries around back, he sees Edward Rolles Weston and Richard Devine trying to force Harry, a dull-witted young man, to enter a structure on the property against his will. Ransom intervenes, and Devine sees him as a better prospect than Harry for what he and Weston have in mind. With Weston's grudging consent, Devine offers Ransom a drink and accommodations for the night.

After enjoying what he thinks is just a glass of whisky, Ransom realises that he has been drugged. He tries to escape but is subdued by Weston and Devine. When he regains consciousness he finds himself in a metallic spherical spaceship *en route* to a planet called Malacandra. The wonder and excitement of such a prospect relieves his anguish at being kidnapped, but Ransom is put on his guard when he overhears Weston and Devine deliberating whether they will again drug him or keep him conscious when they turn him over to the inhabitants of Malacandra, the *sorns*, as a sacrifice. Ransom takes over work as cook and scullion, but appropriates a knife and plans to escape when he gets the chance.

Soon after the three land on the strange planet, Ransom gets his chance to run off into the unknown landscape, just after which he sees the Sorns—tall alien creatures who terrify him. Ransom wanders around, finding many differences between Earth and Malacandra, in that all the lakes, streams, and rivers are warm; the gravity is significantly less; and the plants and mountains are strangely tall and thin.

Ransom later meets a civilised native of Malacandra, a *hross* named Hyoi, a tall, thin, and furry creature. He becomes a guest for several weeks in Hyoi's village, where he uses his philological skills to learn the language of the *hrossa* and also learns their culture. In the process he discovers that gold, to the *hrossa* as "Sun's blood", is plentiful on Malacandra, and thus he is able to discern Devine's motivation for making the voyage. Weston's motives are shown to be more complex; he is bent on expanding humanity through the universe, abandoning each planet and star system as it becomes uninhabitable. (Weston's attitudes, are a theme further developed in the sequel *Perelandra*)

The *hrossa* honour Ransom greatly by asking him to join them in a hunt for a *hnakra* (plural *hnéraki*), a fierce water-creature which seems to be the only dangerous predator on the planet, resembling both a shark and a crocodile. While hunting, Ransom and his *hrossa* companions are told by an *eldil*, an almost invisible creature reminiscent of a spirit or *deva*, that Ransom must go to meet Oyarsa, the *eldil* who is ruler of the planet—and indeed that he already should have done so. He hesitates to respond to the summons, as he wishes to proceed with the hunt. Hyoi, after killing the *hnakra* with Ransom's help, is shot dead by Devine and Weston, who are seeking Ransom in order to take him prisoner and hand him over to the *séroni.* Ransom is told by Hyoi's friend (another *hross* named Whin) that this is the consequence of disobeying Oyarsa, and that Ransom must now cross the mountains to escape Weston and Devine and fulfil his orders. On his journey, Ransom finally meets a *sorn,* as he long feared he might. He finds, however, that the *séroni* are peaceful and kindly. Augray (the *sorn*) initially suspects Ransom of coming from Glundandra, because he is so squat (to his eyes), but later realises he must be from Thulcandra or Earth instead. Augray explains to him the nature of the Oyarsa's body, and that of all *eldila.* The next day, carrying the human on his shoulders, Augray takes Ransom to Oyarsa.

After a stop at the dwelling place of an esteemed *sorn* scientist, wherein Ransom is questioned thoroughly regarding all manner of facts about Earth, Ransom finally makes it to Meldilorn, the home of Malacandra's Oyarsa. In Meldilorn, Ransom meets a 'pfifltriggi' who tells him of the beautiful houses and artwork his race make in their native forests. Ransom then is led to Oyarsa and a long-awaited conversation begins. In the course of this conversation it is explained that there are *Oyéresu* (the plural) for each of the planets in our solar system; in the four Low Worlds, which have organic life (intelligent and unintelligent), the local Oyarsa is responsible for that life. The ruler of Earth (Thulcandra, "the silent planet"), had become bent and has been restricted to Thulcandra, after a "great war," by the *Oyéresu* and the authority of Maleldil, the ruler of the universe. Ransom is ashamed at how little he can tell Oyarsa about Earth and how foolish he and other humans seem to Oyarsa. While the two are talking, Devine and Weston are brought in guarded by *hrossa,* because they have killed three of that race. Weston does not believe Oyarsa exists and tries to terrify, then pacify the Malachandrians with decorative beads, but is unsuccessful. Oyarsa sends him away with orders to the hrossa to perform the seven dips with his head in cold water. Oyarsa then directs a *pfifltriggi* to "scatter the movements that were" the bodies of Hyoi and the two other *hrossa,* using a small, crystalline instrument; once touched with this instrument, the bodies vanish. Weston is brought back from the water, and makes a long speech justifying his proposed invasion of Malacandra on "progressive" and evolutionary grounds, which Ransom attempts to translate into Malacandrian, thus laying bare the brutality and crudity of Weston's ambitions.

Oyarsa listens carefully to Weston's speech and acknowledges that the scientist is acting out of a sense of duty to his species, and not mere greed. This renders him more mercifully disposed towards the scientist, who accepts that he may die while giving Man the means to continue. However, on closer examination Oyarsa points out that Weston's loyalty is not to Man's mind – or he would equally value the intelligent alien minds already inhabiting Malacandra, instead of seeking to displace them in favour of humanity; nor to Man's body – since, as Weston is well aware of and at ease with, Man's physical form will alter over time, and indeed would have to in order to adapt to Weston's programme of space exploration and colonisation. It seems then that Weston is loyal only to "the seed" – Man's genome – which he seeks to propagate. When Oyarsa questions why this is an intelligible motivation for action, Weston's eloquence fails him and he can only articulate that if Oyarsa does not understand Man's basic loyalty to Man then he, Weston, cannot possibly instruct him.

Oyarsa, passing judgment, tells Weston and Devine that he would not tolerate the presence of such creatures, but lets them leave the planet immediately, albeit under very unfavourable orbital conditions. Oyarsa offers Ransom the option of staying on Malacandra, but Ransom decides he does not belong there, perhaps because he feels himself unworthy and perhaps because he yearns to be back among the human beings of Earth. Oyarsa gives the men ninety days' worth of air and other supplies, telling the Thulcandrians that after ninety days, the ship will disintegrate—so that whether they make it back to Earth or not (which is unlikely given the orbital conditions), they will never return to Malacandra. Weston and Devine do not further harm Ransom, focusing their attention on the perilous journey home. Oyarsa had promised Ransom that the *eldila* of Deep Heaven would watch over and protect him against any attacks from the other two Thulcandrians, who might seek to kill him as a way of economising their air and food supplies; at times, Ransom is conscious of benevolent presences within the spaceship—the *eldila*. After a difficult return journey, the spaceship makes it back to Earth, and is shortly "unbodied" according to Oyarsa's will. Carbon dioxide poisoning becomes an issue during the return trip, so the characters have to move and speak as little as possible in order to reduce their respiration.

Ransom himself half-doubts whether all that happened was true, and he realises that others will be even less inclined to believe it if he should speak of it. However, Clive Staples Lewis, who did not previously know of Ransom's adventure, fortuitously writes to Ransom asking whether he has heard of the mediaeval Latin word "Oyarses" and knows what it meant. This prompts Ransom to let Lewis in on the secret. Ransom then dedicates himself to the mission that Oyarsa gave him before he left Malacandra: stopping Weston from further evil. Ransom and Lewis then collaborate—in the story, not in real life—to compose and publish *Out of the Silent Planet* under the guise of fiction. They realise that only a few readers will recognise their story as describing "real" events, but since they anticipate that further conflict with Weston or the Bent One of Earth will be forthcoming, they also desire simply to familiarise many readers with the ideas contained therein.

## Origins of the book

*Out Of The Silent Planet* is a fictionalized version of Lewis' essay "Religion and Rocketry", describing how extraterrestrial life could be reconciled with Christian theology, much like *That Hideous Strength* is influenced by Lewis' own book *the Abolition of Man*.

The trilogy was inspired and influenced by David Lindsay's *A Voyage to Arcturus* (1920), as well as Olaf Stapledon's *Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future*, which (arguably) condoned the genocide of native Venusians as necessary for humanity's survival.

According to biographer A. N. Wilson, Lewis wrote the novel after a conversation with J. R. R. Tolkien in which both men lamented the state of contemporary fiction. They agreed that Lewis would write a space-travel story, and Tolkien would write a time-travel one. Tolkien's story only exists as a fragment, published in *The Lost Road and other writings* (1987) edited by his son Christopher.

A "NOTE" precedes the text of the story: "Certain slighting references to earlier stories of this type which will be found in the following pages have been put there for purely dramatic purposes. The author would be sorry if any reader supposed he was too stupid to have enjoyed Mr. H. G. Wells's fantasies or too ungrateful to acknowledge his debt to them."

Unlike Wells' version, Lewis' Martians are peaceful and have no interest in imperial expansion. Lewis deconstructs various popular human fears as found in science fiction. For instance, the notion that aliens — particularly aliens stronger and smarter than us — must necessarily have natures antithetical to and hostile towards human beings. In point of fact, each hnau is more similar to humankind than they are different — even the Energy Beings, the Eldila, who are the most different and powerful from humans by far, love humans more than humans love each other. If there are legions of fallen eldil who plague humanity, it's simply because they choose not to live in peace with us.

## Characters

* **Elwin Ransom** – A professor of philology at a college of the University of Cambridge, hence gifted with languages. He befriends first many *hrossa*, then some *sorns*, and at last Oyarsa.
* **Edward Rolles Weston** – A thick-set physicist, savage, arrogant and greedy, who considers himself ultra-civilised. He mocks "classics and history and such trash" in favour of the hard sciences and imperialism and, boasting to Ransom about his achievements in interplanetary travel, declares, "You cannot be so small-minded as to think that the rights of an individual or of a million individuals are of the slightest importance in comparison with this."
* **Richard Devine** – Later a politician, Weston's "power-hungry accomplice" possesses "that kind of humour which consists in a perpetual parody of the sentimental or idealistic clichés of one's elders." "He was quite ready to laugh at Weston's solemn scientific idealism. He didn't give a damn, he said, "for the future of the species or the meeting of two worlds." He instead is motivated solely by greed for wealth and seeks to exploit Malacandra for its gold.
* **Hyoi** – Ransom's first hross friend; they meet in Chapter 9, and Hyoi begins to teach him the Old Solar language and the practical philosophy of the *hrossa*. Hyoi is murdered by Weston.
* **Hnohra** – An older 'hross who teaches Ransom to speak Old Solar.
* **Augray** – A *sorn* who saves Ransom from near death on his freezing mountain-top, asks him many questions about Earth, and carries him to Meldilorn to meet Oyarsa.
* **Kanakaberaka** – A pfifltrigg who carves Ransom's portrait onto a stone at Meldilorn.
* **Oyarsa** is undying, wise, and compassionate. He is the greatest eldil to visit Malacandra and functions as its ruler. Oyarsa tells Ransom that he "sent for" Ransom to visit him from Thulcandra (thus establishing Ransom's special qualities in later books).

## Astrological significance

Somewhat like Gustav Holst's musical suite, *the Planets*, written just before WW1, Lewis' conception of Malacandra/Mars owes as much to mediaeval astrology as modern astronomy. Mars is associated in astrology with the Roman god of war, both by name and by influence and the Earthmen attempt to introduce conflict and hatred to the planet. This is also an inversion of H.G. Wells' *War of the Worlds* which features a hostile alien race invading Earth. At least one author sees this as a parallel to *the Chronicles of Narnia* published after the Space Trilogy which he says is also based on astrology. Mars' ancient connection to bloodshed may be a result of its red colour, which is visible to the naked eye when it comes into planetary opposition with the Earth.

## Influence on others

*Out of the Silent Planet* has influenced various later SF writers. Arthur C. Clarke called ***Out of the Silent Planet*** and *Perelandra* "two of the very few works of space fiction that can be classed as literature," despite his misgivings about the religious and scientific themes.

In the DC "Universe", the Martian word for "Mars" is "Ma'aleca'andra" as a homage to this trilogy.

It has also, more surprisingly, had an influence on Heavy Metal:

* The group Thulcandra take their name from the Old Solar for Earth in the book.
* Christian metal group King's X recorded an album called *Out of the Silent Planet* and included a song of the same name on their second album, *Gretchen Goes to Nebraska*..
* Iron Maiden recorded the song *Out of the Silent Planet* on their 2000 album, *Brave New World*. They have written songs based on the works of number of other SF authors including those of Ramsey Campbell, Frank Herbert and Robert Heinlein.
* Silent Planet, a Christian metalcore group. after the first book of the trilogy. They currently have one full-length LP and two EPs.

The hrossa, séroni, and pfifltriggi are several of the races living on Mars in Larry Niven's 1999 novel *Rainbow Mars*; they are referred to as the "Pious Ones" by the Barsoomian races. The hrossa are called the "Fishers", the pfifltriggi the "Smiths", and the séroni the "High Folk". The pfifltriggi are one of the races who chose to ride to Earth on Yggdrasil.

The séroni appear at the beginning of the second volume of *The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen* as one of the Martian races allied against the "mollusc invaders" (the Martians from The War of the Worlds).

In *Scarlet Traces: The Great Game*, a hieroglyphics-filled chamber seems to show the hrossa, séroni, and pfifltriggi as the original races of Mars, that were wiped out by the arrival of the War of the Worlds Martians.

In Transformers, the episode Space Opera Act 2: Out of the Silent Planet is named for the book.

Christian horror punk band Blaster the Rocket Man, whose lyrics frequently subsist on monster themes, borrowed heavily from The Space Trilogy in their album *The Monster Who Ate Jesus*. The last track on the album "Tundra Time on Thulcandra" is a tribute to *Out of the Silent Planet*, with an allusion to the planet Perelandra as well. "Malacandra on my mind / Perelandra all the time / Nevermind it's tundra / It's tundra time."

Becoming the Archetype, a Christian progressive death metal band, produced an album titled *Dichotomy* which was inspired by The Space Trilogy. The album explores themes that are prevalent in the trilogy: biology versus technology and man versus machine.

Circle of Dust, a Christian industrial band, reference The Space Trilogy on Disengage, an album which includes two instrumental tracks named *Thulcandra* and *Perelandra*.

Progressive rock band Glass Hammer have based the concept of their album *Perelandra* on the stories of The Space Trilogy and *The Chronicles of Narnia*.

Peter Nicholls describes *Out of the Silent Planet* and *Perelandra* as "planetary romances with elements of medieval mythology. Each planet is seen as having a tutelary spirit; those of the other planets are both good and accessible, while that of Earth is fallen, twisted and not known directly by most humans. These two books are powerfully imagined, although their scientific content is intermittently absurd."

Anna K. Nardo (in *Extrapolation*, summer, 1979) wrote that "as the reader travels with Ransom into Deep Heaven, he too is introduced to worlds where myth comes true and where what are merely artificial constructs to delineate kinds of poetry on earth become living realities in the heroic world of Mars and the pastoral world of Venus. Through identification with Ransom, the reader tastes what, Lewis seems to believe, is almost impossible in the modern world: pure epic and pure lyric experiences."

Robert McClenaghan writes, "*Out of the Silent Planet*, the shortest and most straightforward of the [Space Trilogy] books, incorporates many of the elements of classic science fiction, including a space flight, meetings with fantastic aliens, and an extended depiction of another planet. Were it not for the theological backdrop (which comes into focus only toward the story's end), *Out of the Silent Planet* could pass as merely a well-written and exceptionally erudite pulp novel."

John Gosling, on his website devoted to *The War of the Worlds*, wrote that the novel "is a very well written and important piece of Martian science fiction."

## Quotations

* "**A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.** You are speaking, *Hmān*, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. **It is all one thing.** The *séroni* could say it better than I say it now. Not better than I could say it in a poem. What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the *crah* is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. **What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then–that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it.**"
	+ Hyoi, p. 73

* "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.**"
	+ Hyoi, p. 76

* “The love of knowledge is a kind of madness.”

* “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.”

* “And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back--if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?”

* “When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it, what will it be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then - that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it. You say you have poets in your world. Do they not teach you this?”

* “Bent creatures are full of fears”

* “To every man, in his acquaintance with a new art, there comes a moment when that which before was meaningless first lifts, as it were, one corner of the curtain that hides its mystery, and reveals, in a burst of delight which later and fuller understanding can hardly ever equal, one glimpse of the indefinite possibilities within.”

* “They were astonished at what he had to tell them of human history—of war, slavery and prostitution. “It is because they have no Oyarsa,” said one of the pupils. “It is because every one of them wants to be a little Oyarsa himself,” said Augray.”

* “But Ransom, as time wore on, became aware of another and more spiritual cause for his progressive lightening and exultation of heart. A nightmare, long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows in the wake of science, was falling off him. He had read of 'Space': at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds. He had not known how much it affected him till now-now that the very name 'Space' seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He could not call it 'dead'; he felt life pouring into him from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise, since out of this ocean all the worlds and all their life had come? He had thought it barren: he now saw that it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth with so many eyes-and here, with how many more! No: Space was the wrong name.”
* “You are guilty of no evil, Ransom of Thulcandra, except a little fearfulness. For that, the journey you go on is your pain, and perhaps your cure: for you must be either mad or brave before it is ended.”
* “Weston did not know the Malacandrian word for laugh: indeed, it was not a word he understood very well in any language.”
* “He [Bent One] has left you this way because a bent hnau can do more evil than a broken one.”
* “now that the very name "space" seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He could not call it 'dead'; he felt life pouring in at every moment.”
* “It was all there in that little disc-London, Athens, Jerusalem, Shakespeare. There everyone had lived and everything had happened; and there, presumably, his pack was still lying in the porch of an empty house near Sterk.”
* “A sense of great masses moving at visionary speeds, of giants dancing, of eternal sorrows consoled, of he knew not what and yet he had always known, awoke in him with the very first bass of the deep-mouthed dirge, and bowed down his spirit as if the gate of heaven had opened before him.”
* “He was only too well aware that such resolutions might look very different when the moment came, but he felt an unwonted assurance that somehow or other he would be able to go through with it. It was necessary, and the necessary was always possible.”
* “The weakest of my people does not fear death. It is the Bent One, the lord of your world, who wastes your lives and befouls them with flying from what you know will overtake you in the end. If you were subjects of Maleldil you would have peace.”
* “Ransom was by now thoroughly frightened—not with the prosaic fright that a man suffers in a war, but with a heady, bounding kind of fear that was hardly distinguishable from his general excitement: he was poised on a sort of emotional watershed from which, he felt, he might at any moment pass either into delirious terror or into an ecstasy of joy.”
* “Now that he was navigating, his celestial mood was shattered. Wild, animal thirst for life, mixed with homesick longing for the free airs and the sights and smells of earth-for grass and meat and beer and tea and the human voice-awoke in him.”
* “We do not truly see light, we only see slower things lit by it, so that for us light is on the edge-the last thing we know before things become too swift for us.”
* “The stars in their courses were fighting against Weston.”
* “I don't believe your theory that "readers never notice that sort of thing." I'm sure I should.”
* “Ransom preferred to work as a volunteer rather than in admitted slavery: and he liked his cooking a good deal more than that of his companions.”
“There I drank life because death was in the pool. That was the best of drinks save one.”

“What one?” Asked Ransom
“Death itself in the day I drink it and go to Maleldil.”
* “He had thought it barren: he saw now that it was the womb of the worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth with so many eyes--and here, with how many more! No: space was the wrong name.”
* “He could not feel that they were an island of life journeying through an abyss of death. He felt almost the opposite--that life was waiting outside the little iron egg-shell in which they rode, ready at any moment to break in, and that, if it killed them, it would kill them by excess of its vitality. He hoped passionately that if they were to perish they would perish by the "unbodying" of the space-ship and not by suffocation within it. To be let out, to be free, to dissolve into the ocean of eternal noon, seemed to him at certain moments a consummation even more desirable than their return to Earth. And if he had felt some such lift of the heart when first he passed through heaven on their outward journey, he felt it now tenfold, for now he was convinced that the abyss was full of life in the most literal sense, full of living creatures.”
* “Like a silence spreading over a room full of people, like an infinitesimal coolness on a sultry day, like a passing memory of some long-forgotten sound or scent, like all that is stillest and smallest and most hard to seize in nature, Oyarsa passed between his subjects and drew near and came to rest, not ten yards away from Ransom in the centre of Meldilorn.”

* “He would have made them as your people are now- wise enough to see the death of their kind approaching but not wise enough to endure it.”
* “My name is Ransom, if that is what you mean. And—” “By Jove,” said the slender man, “not Ransom who used to be at Wedenshaw?” “I was at school at Wedenshaw,” said Ransom. “I thought I knew you as soon as you spoke,” said the slender man. “I’m Devine. Don’t you remember me?” “Of course. I should think I do!” said Ransom as the two men shook hands with the rather laboured cordiality which is traditional in such meetings. In actual fact Ransom had disliked Devine at school as much as anyone he could remember.”
* “I am afraid of the lengths of time, Oyarsa...pg. 123”
* “Guided by some vague picnicker's hankering for a 'better' place, he went a few yards upstream.”
* “The sound of his own voice yawning⁠—the old sound heard in night-nurseries, school dormitories and in so many bedrooms⁠—liberated a flood of self-pity.”
* “The love of knowledge is a kind of madness. In the fraction of a second which it took Ransom to decide that the creature was really talking, and while he still knew that he might be facing instant death, his imagination had leaped over every fear and hope and probability of his situation to follow the dazzling project of making a Malacandrian grammar.”
* “When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it.”
* “There I drank life because death was in the pool.”
* “The air was cold but not bitterly so, and it seemed a bit rough at the back of his throat. He gazed about him, and the very intensity of his desire to take in the new world at a glance defeated itself. He saw nothing but colours - colours that refused to form themselves into things. Moreover, he knew nothing yet well enough to see it: you cannot see things till you know roughly what they are. His first impression was of a bright, pale world - a watercolour world out of a child's paint-box, a moment later he recognised the flat belt of light blue as a sheet of water, or of something like water, which came nearly to his feet. They were on the shore of a lake or river.”
* “He wondered how he ever could have thought of planets, even of the Earth, as islands of life and reality floating in a deadly void. Now, with a certainty which never after deserted him, he saw the planets - the 'earths' he called them in his thought - as mere holes or gaps in the living heaven - excluded and rejected wastes of heavy matter and murky air, formed not by addition to, but subtraction from, the surrounding brightness.”
* “The mere presence of a human being, with its offer of at least some companionship, broke down the tension in which his nerves had long been resisting a bottomless dismay. pg. 24”
* “At that moment he was unconscious of everything except his fear. He did not even know what he was afraid of: the fear itself possessed his whole mind, a formless, infinite misgiving. pg. 25”
* “The adventure was too high, its circumstance too solemn, for any emotion save a severe delight. pg. 31”
* “I suppose everyone knows this fear of getting “drawn in” the moment at which a man realizes that what had seemed mere speculations are on the point of landing him in the Communist Party or the Christian Church—the sense that a door has just slammed and left him on the inside.”
“That was the best of drinks save one.’ ‘What one?’ asked Ransom.

‘Death itself in the day I drink it and go to Maleldil.”
* “Then all had been whimpering, unanalysed, self-nourishing, self-consuming dismay. Now, in the clear light of an accepted duty, he felt fear indeed, but with it a sober sense of confidence in himself and in the world, and even an element of pleasure.”

* “It was the difference between a landsman in a sinking ship and a horseman on a bolting horse: either may be killed, but the horseman is an agent as well as a patient.”

* “The hrossa used to have many books of poetry,” they added. “But now they have fewer. They say that the writing of books destroys poetry.”

* “...there are no coffins in Malacandra, no sextons, churchyards, or undertakers. The valley is solemn at their departure, but I see no signs of passionate grief. They do not doubt their immortality, and friends of the same generation are not torn apart. You leave the world, as you entered it, with "men of your own year." Death is not preceded by dread nor followed by corruption.”
* “In that way you are seeing a picture that was finished when your world was still half-made. But do not speak of these things. My people have a law never to speak much of sizes or numbers to you others, not even to sorns. You do not understand, and it makes you do reverence to nothings and pass by what is truly great.”

* “The weakest of my people does not fear death. It is the Bent One, the lord of your world, who wastes your lives and befouls them with flying from what you know will overtake you in the end. If you were subjects of Maleldil you would have peace.” Weston writhed in the exasperation”

* “No. Thulcandra is the world we do not know. It alone is outside the heaven, and no message comes from it.”

* “I see now how the lord of the silent world has bent you. There are laws that all hnau know, of pity and straight dealing and shame and the like, and one of these is the love of kindred. He has taught you to break all of them except this one, which is not one of the greatest laws; this one he has bent till it becomes folly and has set it up, thus bent”
* “to be a little blind Oyarsa in your brain. And now you can do nothing but obey it, though if we ask you why it is a law you can give no other reason for it than for all the other and greater laws which it drives you to disobey. Do you know why he has done this?”
* “Yes,” said Oyarsa, “but one thing we left behind us on the harandra: fear. And with fear, murder and rebellion. The weakest of my people does not fear death. It is the Bent One, the lord of your world, who wastes your lives and befouls them with flying from what you know will overtake you in the end. If you were subjects of Maleldil you would have peace.”

## External links

* Britannica article
* Lewisiana notes on Silent Planet
* Malacandra as Utopia: Plato’s Republic as Reflected in C.S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet