Out of the Silent Planet -- A Lesson in Morality?

The author C. S. Lewis is arguably one of the more fascinating writers of the 20th century. He has lead an interesting life, starting out as an atheist until 1929 when he accepted the idea of the existence of a Supreme Being and in 1931 when he became a Christian.

Most of his works beforehand were of a scientific and cold nature, however with his newfound faith in God came some brilliant works, including The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy.

Out of the Silent Planet was written in 1938, and is the first installment of The Space Trilogy.

The main character is Ransom, a philologist and a professor at Cambridge University. Aliens kidnap Ransom and take him on a space voyage. Ransom is in awe when he wakes up in the spaceship and sees what he believes to be the moon up close. He is soon informed, however, that what he is looking at is Earth, and not the moon.

At this point, you have to accept some rather interesting artistic liberties on the part of C. S. Lewis. Keep in mind this book was written in 1938, and the only rockets man was using were to launch crude missiles at each other in warfare. Space travel was still sheer fantasy. It is fascinating to read about how the author perceives simple problems, such as maintaining gravity on a spaceship, or blocking out the extreme light of the sun while in space so his traveler doesn’t go blind.

Ransom is carted off to a strange planet called Malacandra. It takes him some time, but he eventually is able to deduce that the planet is actually Mars. He uses a rather scientific method to determine this, including comparing the gravity to Earth, the temperature, amount of sunlight, etc. It is also entertaining to read how Ransom attempts to communicate with the creatures on Malacandra.

Eventually, Ransom does learn to communicate with the locals and discovers that Ransom is from a planet the Malacandrans call Thulcandra. In translation, it means “Silent Planet.” Apparently, all the planets have been able to communicate with each other, but for some reason Earth was taken out of the communication stream sometime back.

Ransom tries to figure out what caused the cessation of communication and discovers that a powerful being, known as the Old One, has cut off communications but no one really knows why. Ransom decides his mission is to find out why the communications have stopped.

The parallels between Lewis’ transformation from an atheist to a Christian and the story of Ransom’s travels are amazingly clear. Actually, Lewis writes on a parallel showing how a lack of God in society is leading to society’s downfall. His eventual message is that we need to once again embrace God instead of continuing to push Him away, or we risk utter doom and complete failure.

Lewis gives the reader a powerful message in a way that only his genius allows.

The reading level of Out of the Silent Planet is rather simple. I first read this book in the fourth grade and had no troubles with the story. I didn’t, however, understand the underlying message until I was in college. This is not, by any means, a religious book. Rather, in college I had learned about Lewis’ life and was later able to extrapolate the meaning behind his words.

This is a very entertaining story, and I would recommend it to anyone. I would also recommend the other parts of the trilogy, Prelanda and That Hideous Strength.