- Paperback: 176 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins; New edition edition (3 July 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0006281656
- ISBN-13: 978-0006281658
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13 x 1.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 907,294 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
"The New Yorker" If wit and wisdom, style and scholarship are requisites to passage through the pearly gates, Mr. Lewis will be among the angels.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
The first novel in C.S. Lewis’s classic sci-fi trilogy which tells the adventure of Dr Ransom who was kidnapped and transported to another planet.
Dr Ransom is a Cambridge academic who is captured whilst on a walking tour and forced into a spaceship by two men. With them he flies to Malacandra (Mars) . There he escapes his captors and discovers an amazing range of rational creatures on the planet, and in addition, spiritual creatures. Through the story of the Malacandrans, spiritual truths concerning the planet Earth are uncovered.
Lewis tells the tale with a wealth of imagination and sense of adventure, drawing out the realities of good and evil, God and the devil from the fantasy.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
C.S. Lewis is best known for his classic fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia. But he's in his best form in the sprawling Space Trilogy. And the first volume "Out of the Silent Planet" is a solid, dreamy slice of imaginative science fiction with deep philosophical underpinnings.
Philologist (studies languages) Dr. Ransom is on a walking tour of England when he encounters a former despised schoolmate, Devine. Things take a nasty turn after Devine and his accomplice Weston drug Ransom, and load him onto a spaceship. Over the course of a month's interstellar travel, Ransom learns that they are travelling to the planet Malacandra (Mars) -- and worst, he's destined to be a human sacrifice.
Ransom manages to escape after they land, and finds himself alone in an alien world. He soon is taken in by the otterlike hrossa, and learns that there are three sentient species on Malacandra: the peaceful poetry-loving hrossa, the workaholic pfifltriggi, and intelligent seroni. When a hross friend of Ransom's is killed by the murderous humans, he sets out to find the mysterious, powerful Oyarsa, who might be able to help him and stop his kidnappers.
"Out of the Silent Planet" is no space opera. Lewis avoids most of the tendencies of typical sci-fi in favor of a more H.G. Wells approach. Big fleshy plants, sentient otters, decreased gravity and petrified forests really give it the feeling of another planet without using cheap tricks.
The most striking idea of "Planet" is the people who populate it -- three dissimilar species, who work together and have no problems like war, starvation, lies, power-lust or any of the other problems that human beings have. It's a stark contrast to our own world, and it illustrates a lot of Lewis's own Christian beliefs without being preachy or silly.
The tone of "Planet" is generally very somber and thought-provoking, with long stretches of ethical and philosophical dialogue. Parts of it almost seem like a dream, very eerie and surreal, and the dignified personalities of Oyarsa and his underlings are beautifully done. But Lewis rips loose with some comedy from time to time, like Weston trying to bribe the various natives with a cheap necklace and Tarzan-esque threats of "Why you take our puff-bangs [guns] away? We very angry with you!"
Lewis based Ransom partly on his pal, fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien, and Ransom is a nicely done hero; he's not boring or preachy at all, but merely a "stranger in a strange land" who almost goes bonkers once or twice, but manages to triumph. Weston and Devine, on the other hand, are arrogant and dumb in an all-too-recognizable way. And the inhabitants of Malacandra take a little getting used to, but they're pleasant once you do.
"Out of the Silent Planet" still stands up as a vivid and beautifully-written piece of science fiction. You think you know C.S. Lewis after the Narnia Chronicles? Try the Space Trilogy.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm 15, and the instant I picked this book up I couldn't put it down. This isn't one of those corny sci-fi books written for kids with unintelligent creatures that walk around eating everything in sight. It does give a person something to think about. The scenery and creatures living on Malachandra are quite different than any species imaginable. Lewis describes everything with great detail, so you aren't sitting in the dark on what you are supposed to be picturing. Lewis twists science with beliefs in a very remarkable way, and you will definately see things in a differant light when you are through. An interesting aspect is that in the end, he gets across that there truly was a "Ransom," and that he wrote to Lewis on the subject because he believed that he really was to Malachandra. This is an overall inspiring book to read, and you will really enjoy it.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Once again, I have fallen in love with a book by C.S. Lewis. "Out of the Silent Planet" takes its place alongside "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", "Till We Have Faces", "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader", "Mere Christianity", "The Great Divorce", "The Screwtape Letters", and "The Last Battle" as books Lewis has written that I believe everyone should read.
I am astounded by Lewis' creative imagination. The planet of Malacandra is a profound idea expressed beautifully. I do not wish to go into too many details because discovery is the real joy in reading this book. However, I must say that Ransom is one of Lewis' most complex and compelling (if somewhat ambiguous) protagonists; and therefore...one of my favorites.
I thoroughly enjoyed Out of the Silent Planet. I sincerely encourage you to acquire this book and read it. It is an amazing adventure.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Astounding!
Lewis' language leaps off the page in glorious Technicolor. The story is a familiar one - colonizers versus the oppressed and the carnage that ensues - but the setting and prose... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Miss Kirsty Neary
great book but...
Absolutely wonderful sci fi, unique and very different from modern empoverished attempts at the genre, but there are quite a few typos which occasionally distract from the text. Read more
Published 11 months ago by M. Lea
a gifted amateur of sci-fi
Though not known as a sci fi writer, when he tried his hand at the genre he produced a first rate work: it has imagination and a grand chritianised scheme, vivid characters, and is... Read more
Published 12 months ago by rob crawford
Classic Lewis
In this, the first of Lewis' Cosmic Trilogy, three men travel - one unwillingly - to Malacandra (Mars), and there they encounter the different lifeforms of the planet. C.S. Read more
Published on 13 Sep 2009 by Elginson
Fantastic
This book quickly develops into an action-based sci-fi from the beginning. Ransom, an intelligient man of philology, ends up on his way to an alien planet taken by force. Read more
Published on 7 July 2009 by Kieran Senior
Forget Narnia...welcome to Mars...
I ordered this book, as I had picked up the other two books in the "cosmic trilogy" second-hand and I wanted to read the series in order - this is the first book. Read more
Published on 4 April 2009 by L. Elliott
Better than I thought it would be
Maybe it's one of those roads you take when you're younger, but I never read CS Lewis as a kid. Instead I was a 12-year-old Tolkien nerd. Read more
Published on 31 Jan 2009 by lexo1941
Timeless
I put off reading this book for a very long time and I regretted doing so almost as soon as I'd begun reading it. Read more
Published on 9 May 2008 by Fantasy Lore
Great
This is the first book in C.S. Lewis's amazing Space Trilogy. These books are far less known than Lewis's Narnia series or even his Mere Christianity or The Screwtape Letters, yet... Read more
Published on 2 April 2008 by Steven R. McEvoy
Great
This is the first book in C.S. Lewis's amazing Space Trilogy. These books are far less known than Lewis's Narnia series or even his Mere Christianity or The Screwtape Letters, yet... Read more
Published on 2 April 2008 by Steven R. McEvoy
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