This book is the first instalment of C.S. Lewis's Space trilogy. As is my wont when dealing with series, in this post I will only give a rough [spoiler-free] sketch of the story & reserve my broader reflections on characters/themes/etc for the post about the final book.
We are introduced to Dr. Ransom, a Cambridge philologist on a walking holiday. Quite by chance he bumps into an old schoolmate whom he cordially dislikes, named Devine, and his associate, an eminent physicist named Weston. The pair invite Ransom back for a drink, and - lo! - he finds himself drugged. Ransom wakes up on a spaceship headed for the planet Malacandra [spoiler alert - it's Mars] where his captors intend to sell him as a sacrifice to the planet's locals in exchange for precious objects. Upon arrival however, Ransom manages to escape their clutches, and soon finds himself embroiled in a rambling, largely aimless adventure during which he is introduced one-by-one to the three sentient races peopling Malacandra - the seal-like poets, hrossa; the spindly-humanoid thinkers, sorns; and the frog-like masons, pfifltriggi. Each of these alien races are deliciously well-sketched in both physiology & culture, displaying an imagination far beyond the folklore-lucky-dip population of Narnia, to make a harsh but fair comparison with Lewis's other forays into imaginative fiction. Ransom spends long enough with these locals to get to grips with their language, but when Devine & Weston shoot dead the hross whom he had best befriended, he is prompted to go on a solitary quest in pursuit of the eldila, spiritual-ish beings who are revered on Malacandra, and who the locals think it is important Ransom explain himself to. We find out why in the final few chapters, in which the conflicting philosophies of Malacandra & the silent planet Thulcandra [i.e. Earth] are brought into colourful dialogue.
I really enjoyed this book* - it has a lot of really interesting anthropological & ethical reflections littered casually throughout, and is told in lively immersive prose; I look forward to reading the next two books soon.
* Arguably not as much as I apparently did the first time I tried to read it, though that was back in the summer of 2020 while I was midway through a psychotic break - as is evidenced by the insanely dense underlinings & annotations on the first five or so pages [as well as pages 42-3 for some reason] of my copy of this book.
