In the first novel of C.S. Lewis's classic science fiction trilogy, Dr Ransom, a Cambridge academic, is abducted and taken on a spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra, which he knows as Mars. His captors are plotting to plunder the planet's treasures and plan to offer Ransom as a sacrifice to the creatures who live there. Ransom discovers he has come from the 'silent planet' – Earth – whose tragic story is known throughout the universe...
Clive Staples Lewis, moralist and novelist, was born in 1898 in Belfast and educated at Malvern and University College, Oxford. He was appointed Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge in 1954. ‘Jack’ Lewis is best known for his literary criticism, religious and ethical works, science fiction, and most notably for his Narnia chronicles for children. He died in 1963.