This novel makes me curious to read the other two works in the Space Trilogy to see how the rest of Ransom’s journey plays out. The philosophical musings towards the book’s latter chapters can be bit dense though they actually force you to think as opposed to just being deep for no good reason. But things aren’t what they seem and it’s Ransom who turns out to discover what life and the universe truly mean. Ransom is transported by evil and sorely misguided men to another planet, assuming Ransom will meet his end there and they, in turn, can make a name for themselves. It’s also no surprise that this novel is a spiritual allegory though it certainly doesn’t preach.
The only difference is that where Verne concentrated on scientific concepts and technologies, Lewis focuses on the human (or should I also say alien?) aspect by exposing readers to an alien culture that bears some familiarity yet remains uniquely extraterrestrial.
Essentially, this is similar in vein to the grand discovery tales penned by Father of Science Fiction himself, Jules Verne. The plot is fairly basic though that’s certainly not meant as an insult. How indeed should it be otherwise, since out of this ocean all the worlds and all their life had come? He had thought it barren: he now saw that it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth with so many eyes-and here, with how many more! No: Space was the wrong name.Out of the Silent Planet is a small book yet reads like a work twice its size. He could not call it 'dead' he felt life pouring into him from it every moment. He had not known how much it affected him till now-now that the very name 'Space' seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He had read of 'Space': at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds. A nightmare, long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows in the wake of science, was falling off him.
“But Ransom, as time wore on, became aware of another and more spiritual cause for his progressive lightening and exultation of heart.
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