Out of The Silent Planet - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

The story begins with Dr. Elwin Ransom, a professor of philology at a college of the University of Cambridge, on a hiking trip in the English Midlands. Being refused lodging in the village of Nadderby he must travel into the Day the six miles to Sterk. He comes to a small, isolated cottage, the home of a woman and her mentally subnormal son, Harry. The anxious woman thinks Ransom is Harry and runs into him as he comes toward the cottage. She implicitly declines to accommodate Ransom, but tells him about where Harry works, the Rise, the small estate of Professor Weston. She also speaks of a gentleman from London staying there, Mr. Devine, whom Ransom discovers to be his former schoolfellow, a person whom he "cordially disliked." Despite the woman's doubt that Ransom would find lodging, he decides to go there anyway, assuring the woman that he will see to it that Harry is sent home.

When he gets to the front door of the Rise, Ransom hears shouting and struggling inside. When he goes around back, he sees Weston and Devine trying to force Harry to enter a structure on the property ("It weren't the wash-house," Harry insists) against his will. Ransom intervenes in the struggle, 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 loses consciousness. When he awakens shortly thereafter he realizes that he has been drugged. He tries to escape but is subdued by Weston and Devine. When he again 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, who has been put to work as cook and scullion, 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. He 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 and well-formed 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 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 thither. 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 (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 is told by an eldil, an almost invisible creature reminiscent of a spirit or deva, that he must meet Oyarsa, the eldil who is ruler of the planet. 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) 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 (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 responsible for that life. The ruler of Earth (Thulcandra, "the silent planet"), has turned evil (become "bent") 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 is summoned to Oyarsa's presence 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 value equally the 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. Here 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. To Ransom, Oyarsa offers him the option of staying on Malacandra. He 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 of air and other supplies, telling the Thulcandrians that after ninety days, the ship will disintegrate; either way, 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, when the author (Lewis) writes him asking whether he has heard of the medieval Latin word "Oyarses" and knows what it meant, he lets him in on the secret. Ransom then dedicates himself to the mission that Oyarsa gave him before he left Malacandra of stopping Weston from further evil.

The storyline 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...." in a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green. Wells's book, like Lewis's, 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's Cavor 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 extraterrestrial bars of gold, and they quietly build themselves a spaceship in the English countryside. In both stories, the interplanetary craft are spherical, though only Lewis' is called a "space-ship". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, J. J. Astor in his A Journey in Other Worlds first used the term "space-ship" in 1894, but Lewis was the fourth person to use the term in published material.