Out of the Silent Planet

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This page is about the novel. "Out of the Silent Planet" is also the title of a song by Iron Maiden from the album Brave New World and of the first album by King's X.

Title Out of the Silent Planet

First edition cover
Author	C.S. Lewis
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	Space Trilogy
Genre(s)	Science fiction novel
Publisher	The Bodley Head
Released	1938
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	264 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN	NA & ISBN 0-7432-3490-1 (recent edition)
Followed by	Perelandra

Out of the Silent Planet is the first novel of a science fiction trilogy written by C. S. Lewis, sometimes referred to as the Space Trilogy or Ransom Trilogy. The other volumes are Perelandra (also published as Voyage to Venus) and That Hideous Strength, and a fragment of a sequel was published posthumously as The Dark Tower. The trilogy was inspired and influenced by David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus (1920).[1]

According to his 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.

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Major themes 3 Hrossa, Séroni, Pfifltriggi 4 Glossary 5 External links

[edit] Plot summary

The story begins with Elwin Ransom, a professor of philology, on a hiking trip in the English Midlands, knocking on the door of an isolated cottage in an attempt to find sleeping accommodations. The cottage is occupied by a woman whose son works late at nights. She informs Ransom that she will provide accommodations if he goes and brings her son home. Ransom agrees and asks where her son is. She tells him where to find him, and Ransom makes his way to the walled estate. The estate is occupied by Ransom's former schoolmate Devine, whom Ransom remembers having cordially disliked. Devine, however, enthusiastically welcomes Ransom and offers him a room and a meal, and first of all, a drink. As it turns out, Devine and his associate, Professor Weston, have ulterior motives: Weston is a scientist who has discovered a way to travel in space and the two men need another person to take with them on their next journey. Ransom realizes his drink has been doped, but before he can escape he is hit on the head and loses consciousness. When he wakes, he finds himself on a ship traveling through space (which Ransom sees as "Deep Heaven") to the planet Malacandra. While on the journey Ransom overhears Weston and Devine talking about whether they should again drug Ransom before they turn him over to the inhabitants of Malacandra, the sorns, or allow him to stay conscious. Ransom, fearing the worst, decides to escape as soon as he gets a chance.

Soon after the three land on the strange planet, Ransom gets his chance to run off into the unknown landscape. He wanders around, finding many differences between Earth and Malacandra, such as 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 runs into an intelligent native of Malacandra, a hross named Hyoi. He becomes a guest for several months at Hyoi's village, where he uses his philological skills to learn the language of the hrossa and finds out about their culture. He also learns 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 thither. (Weston's motives are more complex.)

The hrossa honor 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. While hunting, Ransom is told by an eldil, a creature reminiscent of very faint light, that he needs to meet Oyarsa, the eldil who is in charge of the planet. They proceed with the hunt and, after killing the hnakra with Ransom's help, Hyoi is shot dead by Devine and Weston, who are trying to find Ransom. On his journey, Ransom runs into the creature that he has feared ever since he heard of them, a sorn. He finds out, though, that the séroni are peaceful and kind. The sorn, Augray, ends up taking Ransom the rest of the way to Oyarsa.

Ransom finally makes it to Meldilorn, Home of Oyarsa, after many days of traveling in thin air. In Meldilorn, Ransom meets a Pfifltrig who is carving a statue of Ransom. The Pfifltrig tells Ransom of the beautiful houses and artwork his race does in their native forests. Ransom then is led to Oyarsa and long awaited conversation begins. Through the conversation Ransom finds out that there are Oyéresu (the plural) for each of the planets in our solar system; in the four inner planets, which have organic life (intelligent and non-intelligent) the local Oyarsa is in charge of that life. The Oyarsa of Earth, called Thulcandra (the silent planet) by Oyarsa, has turned evil and has been restricted to Thulcandra by 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 hrossa. Oyarsa dissects their characters and beliefs.

The scene may have been influenced by H. G. Wells's First Men in the Moon which Lewis described as "The best of the sort [Science Fiction] I have read...." (from a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green). Wells' book, like Lewis', reaches its climax with a meeting between an Earthman and the wise ruler of an alien world, during which the Earthman makes very ill-considered boasts of his species' military prowess. (The characters of Weston and Devine might be, in general, dark versions of Wells' Cavour and Bradford. In both books, a scientist with a wide-ranging mind forms a partnership with an eminently practical man who has a special attraction to extra-terrestrial bars of gold, and they quietly build themselves a spaceship in the English countryside).

Oyarsa tells Weston and Devine that he would not tolerate the presence of creatures such as they, but lets them take the chance of immediately leaving the planet and trying to get back to Earth under very unfavorable orbital conditions. Although Oyarsa offers him the option of staying in Malacandra, Ransom decides that he does not belong there, perhaps feeling himself unworthy and perhaps just because - as much as he likes the Malacandrian creatures - he is longing to be back among human beings. After a difficult return journey, the space ship makes it back to Earth. Weston and Devine do not further molest Ransom, perhaps realizing that if Ransom were to try to expose their villainies, no-one would believe him, since there is no corroboration for the story. (To prevent further instrusions in Malacandra, Oyarsa has caused the ship to "unbody" i.e. disintegrate shortly after landing.) Ransom then questions whether all that happened was true or he only was dreaming. He returns to believing his trip to be true when a friend writes him asking whether he has heard of the medieval Latin word "Oyarsa" and knows what it meant. Ransom then dedicates himself to the mission that Oyarsa gave him before he left Malacandra: stopping Weston from further evil.

[edit] Major themes

The eldila, who work for Oyarsa as messengers and maintainers of the planet, are meant to be angels. Oyarsa is a more powerful angel, perhaps an archangel, and Oyarsa's superior, Maleldil the Young, represents Jesus. The 'Old one', the creator of Mars, is God the Father. Part of the background in Out of the Silent Planet is that Earth's Oyarsa (who is obviously Satan or Lucifer) became "bent," destroyed most of the life on Mars, and was forcibly imprisoned inside the Moon's orbit - having induced (as comes up later in the series) the creatures living under the Lunar surface to adopt evil ways and deliberately destroy all the life which once existed on their surface. Since the eldila, who fill space (or "the heavens," which are depicted as warm and bright due to the Sun) know nothing about what goes on inside those boundaries, Earth is called Thulcandra, "the silent planet." While Earth has fallen into evil, Mars has not. This represented one of Lewis's concerns about space travel; that fallen humanity would have nothing to offer other life in space other than our depravity.

As in many other science fiction works of his time and earlier, Mars in this book is conceived of as a dying world; the enormous canals believed at the time to be a major feature of its surface (until space probes proved them nonexistent) were conceived as a major engineering project undertaken by the Martians in their effort to survive. The logical conclusion, first made by H. G. Wells in The War of the Worlds and repeated by various others, was to assume that the Martians would eventually try to escape their dying world and settle on the younger and more vigorous Earth.

Olaf Stapledon, in Last and First Men - a monumental future history stretching over millions and billions of years which was published shortly before Lewis' book, made a further extrapolation: humans in the far-off future escaping the dying Earth and settling on Venus, in the process totally exterminating its native inhabitants - a marine intelligent species. Stapeldon's book can be seen as condoning such interplanetary genocide as a justified act if necessary for racial survival (though some of Stapeldon's partisans denied that such was his intention).

Lewis very strongly objected to the idea, and this book can seen as partially a rebuttal of Stapledon. Prof. Weston's arguments in his confrontation with Oyarsa, where he outrightly defends the "right" of "culturally superior" humans to displace and exterminate the Martians are clearly intended to represent Stapledon's arguments (or rather, what Lewis conceived as his arguments). Counterposed by Lewis is the vision of the three virtuous Mars species, aware that their planet is dying, stoically accepting their fate and living a harmonious life under the wise guidance of Oyarsa. (Members of the three species are also aware of the appointed day of their own individual death and accept that, too, stoically).

Though their ancestors possessed the technology to build spaceships and come to Earth, and though specifically invited to do so by Earth's "Bent Oyarsa" (Satan), they have foregone this temptation. (Oyarsa does mention that taking this momentous decision was not quite smooth, and that some rebels who succumbed to the temptation and wanted to go to Earth were harshly dealt with; this was, however, in the distant past, many generations ago).

To Prof. Weston, such a "defeatist" attitude is intolerable (though, had the Martians settled Earth, nascent mankind would have obviously received short shrift). On hearing it he declares himself on the side of the Bent One and his defiant attitude ("He fights, jumps, lives, not like Maleldil [God] who lets everybody die"). In Perelandra this would lead Weston to falling under demonic possession and eventually dying a most gruesome death.

The concepts of space and other planets in this novel are largely taken from medieval cosmology. For more information on it, see C.S. Lewis's The Discarded Image, a series of lectures on this cosmology that were published after his death.

[edit] Hrossa, Séroni, Pfifltriggi

The hrossa (singular hross) resemble otters except that they are somewhat taller and thinner than humans. 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 since they believe that books ruin words and poems. Their technical level is very low, simply because they are not interested in raising it. The boats that they build are similar to our canoes. They add an initial /h/ sound to their words.

The séroni (singular sorn; the plural is sometimes given as sorns) are thin, fifteen-foot-high humanoids with coats of pale feathers and seven-fingered hands. They raise livestock on the high plateaus above the valleys, where they breathe much thinner and colder air than man. They are the scholars and thinkers of Malacandra, specializing in science and abstract learning. Their technical level is futuristically high, though they usually just design the machinery, which is then built by the pfifltriggi. Similarly, they do not write or compose written works of history or fiction as they feel the hrossa are superior at it.

The pfifltriggi (singular pfifltrig) have tapir-like heads (with a bulge at the back containing the brain) 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 sorns. They also are miners who especially like to dig up "sun's blood" or gold. They are the only species to wear a form of clothes and even wear goggles to protect their eyes.

All three of these races and the eldila 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. The creatures do not believe their races to be superior to the others; they acknowledge that they can't do everything.

[edit] Glossary

• handra — earth, land, planet
• harandra — high earth, plateau
• handramit — low earth, valley
• hnakra, pl. hnéraki — a vicious aquatic beast hunted by the hrossa
• hnakrapunt — hnakra-slayer
• Malacandra — a compound noun, formed with the prefix Malac and the noun handra meaning earth, land or planet, and referring to the fourth planet from the sun; in English: Mars
• 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.

[edit] External links

• A review by Tal Cohen
• Malacandra.co.uk - A Wiki especially for C.S. Lewis fans.
• Out of the Silent Planet publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database