Out of the Silent Planet is a science
fiction novel by the British author C.
S. Lewis, published in 1938 by John
Lane, The Bodley Head. Five years later
it was published in the U.S.. Two
sequels were published in 1943 and 1945,
completing the so-called Cosmic Trilogy
or Space Trilogy.
The fragment of another sequel,
evidently set prior to Perelandra and
That Hideous Strength, was published as
"The Dark Tower" in a 1977 collection of
short fiction by Lewis and essays by
four others, The Dark Tower and Other
Stories
Origins
The trilogy was inspired and influenced
by David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus.
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 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."
Plot
At the front door of a house in the
country, Ransom hears shouting and
struggling inside. When he hurries
around back, he sees Weston and 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 a glass
of whisky and soda, Ransom realizes 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
spacecraft 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 is put to 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 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 civilized native of
Malacandra, a hross named Hyoi, a tall,
thin, and furry creature. He becomes a
guest for several months 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,
known to the hrossa as "sun's blood", is
plentiful on Malacandra, and thus 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.
The hrossa honour Ransom greatly by
asking him to join them in a hunt for a
hnakra, 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 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
explains to him the nature of 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 Oyarsa. In Meldilorn, Ransom meets a
pfifltrigg 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 for each of the
planets in our solar system; in the four
inner planets, which have organic life,
the local Oyarsa is responsible for that
life. The ruler of Earth, has turned
evil and has been restricted to
Thulcandra, after "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. Oyarsa then
directs a pfifltrigg 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 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 DNA - 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, they will never return to
Malacandra. Weston and Devine do not
further harm Ransom, focussing 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 economizing
their air and food supplies; at times,
Ransom is conscious of benevolent
presences within the spaceship—the
eldila. After a difficult return
journey, the space-ship makes it back to
Earth, and is shortly "unbodied"
according to Oyarsa's will.
Ransom himself half-doubts whether all
that happened was true, and he realizes
that others will be even less inclined
to believe it if he should speak of it.
However, the author who did not
previously know of Ransom's adventure,
fortuitously writes to Ransom asking
whether he has heard of the medieval
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 realize that only a few
readers will recognize their story as
describing "real" events, but since they
anticipate that further conflict with
Weston or the Bent Oyarsa of Earth will
be forthcoming, they also desire simply
to familiarize many readers with the
ideas contained therein.
Characters
Dr. 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.
Dr. Weston - A thick-set physicist,
savage, arrogant and greedy, who
considers himself ultra-civilized. He
mocks "classics and history and such
trash" in favor 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."
Dick 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.
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 eldila
to visit Malacandra and functions as its
ruler. Oyarsa tells Ransom that he "sent
for" Ransom to visit him from
Thulcandra.
Major themes
Reception
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 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, 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."
Hrossa, séroni, pfifltriggi
On Malacandra there are three native
hnau, reasoning species such as humans.
The hrossa resemble bipedal otters or
seals, and are somewhat taller and
thinner than humans. Ransom finds them
beautiful: "covered, face and all, with
thick black animal hair, and whiskered
like a cat ... glossy coat, liquid eye,
sweet breath and whitest teeth". They
live in the low river valleys and
specialize in farming, fishing, and
performing arts such as dancing and
poetry. They are especially gifted in
making poetry; yet they refuse to write
it down as they believe that books ruin
words and poems. Their technical level
is low, and they wear only pocketed
loincloths. The boats that they build
are similar to our canoes. They add an
initial  sound to their words. Their
sense of humor is "extravagant and
fantastic".
The séroni are thin, fifteen-foot-high
humanoids having coats of pale feathers
and seven-fingered hands. They live in
mountain caves of the high country,
though they often descend into the
handramit where they raise giraffe-like
livestock. They are the scholars and
thinkers of Malacandra, specializing in
science and abstract learning. Their
technical level is high, and they design
machinery, which is built by the
pfifltriggi. Although they can write,
they do not compose written works of
history or fiction as they feel the
hrossa are superior at it. Their sense
of humor "seldom got beyond irony".
The pfifltriggi have tapir-like heads
and frog-like bodies; they lean their
elbows on the ground when at rest, and
sometimes when working with their hands.
Their movements are quick and
insectlike. They are the builders and
technicians of Malacandra. They build
houses and gadgets thought up by the
séroni. They are miners who especially
like to dig up "sun's blood" and other
useful and beautiful minerals. They are
the only species said to wear a form of
clothes, other than the hrossa, and even
wear goggles to protect their eyes.
Their sense of humor is "sharp and
excelled in abuse".
Malacandra's hnau are "unfallen": free
of the tendency to evil and sin that
plagues humans. Ransom describes the
emotional connection between the races
as a cross between that of equals and
that of person to an animal, mirrored in
the way that humans tend to
anthropomorphize pets. Members of the
three races do not believe any one of
the races to be superior to the others;
they acknowledge, rather, that no single
race can do everything.
In the sequels it is made clear that the
language of the hrossa is the primary
Old Solar language, and that the
languages of the other two species are
late derivatives of it. This represents
Lewis' view that the symbolic and
mythopoeic imagination is the primary
language of the human mind and that
scientific and technological analysis is
a later development. In the essay
Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic
Nightmare he argues that, though reason
is the organ of truth, imagination is
the organ of meaning.
Glossary
Arbol — the Sun
crah — final section of a poem
eldil — spirit, angel
Glundandra — Jupiter
handra — earth's element, land, planet
harandra — high earth, plateau
handramit — low earth, valley
hlab — language
hluntheline — long for, yearn for,
desire
hnakra, pl. hnéraki — a vicious aquatic
beast hunted by the hrossa. Its
qualities could be those of a shark and
a crocodile. Lewis may have borrowed the
word from Germanic nicor, Old English
niker(en), meaning "sea monster", or
from the monster that is the object of
Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the
Snark".
hnakrapunt, pl. hnakrapunti —
hnakra-slayer
hnau — rational creature
honodraskrud — ground-weed
hressni — female hrossa
hru — blood
Malacandra — a compound noun, formed
with the prefix Malac and the noun
handra, which latter means earth, land,
or planet, and referring to the fourth
planet from the sun; in English: Mars
Maleldil — Jesus, the second person of
God with "the Old One" and "the Third
One."
Oyarsa, pl. Oyéresu — Ruler of a planet,
a higher-order angel, perhaps an
arch-angel.
Perelandra — a compound noun, formed
with the prefix Perel and the noun
handra, which means earth, land, or
planet, and referring to the second
planet from the sun; in English: Venus
Thulcandra — a compound noun, formed
with the prefix Thulc, meaning "silent",
and handra, meaning earth, land, or
planet, referring to the third planet
from the sun in English: "Silent Planet"
or Earth
wondelone — long for, yearn for, miss.
The hrossa's word for "to eat" contains
consonants unreproducible by the human
mouth. It is not clear how that word
would be pronounced on Venus, where
Ransom, in the sequel, finds humans
speaking the same language as that
spoken by the hrossa.
Weston's speech and its translation
The speech which Weston delivers at the
book's climax, and Ransom's effort to
render it into the Old Solar spoken by
the Malacandrians, demonstrate the
enormous gulf in cultural and moral
perceptions, which renders Weston's
value judgements utterly untranslatable
and may be said to make them absurd;
thus creating a sort of social
criticism. The “translation” that we
read is to be understood as a
back-translation into English of what
Ransom said in Old Solar.
Publication history
(Information has been gleaned from the
Library of Congress, the Internet
Speculative Fiction Database, and
WorldCat.)
Hrossa, séroni, and pfifltriggi adopted
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".
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.
Notes
References
Further reading
Downing, David C, Planets in Peril: A
Critical Study of C. S. Lewis's Ransom
Trilogy. University of Massachusetts
Press, 1992. ISBN 0-87023-997-X
External links
Cosmic Trilogy series listing at the
Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Quotations and Allusions in C. S. Lewis,
Out of the Silent Planet, by the
English-to-Dutch translator Arend Smilde
Synopsis of Out of the Silent Planet
Out of the Silent Planet
