History Literature / OutOfTheSilentPlanet

* SchizoTech: The hrossa use stone and bone tools while the seroni and pfifltriggi are advanced enough to produce things like oxygen masks.

* SpaceIsCold: Averted. All the space travel remains in the inner solar system (from Earth to Mars and back), so the sun is relatively near to Weston's spaceship, always visible, making things very hot within the ship. When Ransom comments, "I always thought space was dark and cold," he is met with scorn for his naivete. "Forgot about the Sun, did you?" On the return trip from Malacandra to Earth, where Weston and Devine have to cut inside the orbit of Venus to get back to Earth in time, they very nearly cook to death before they get past the Sun and start back outwards.

* StarfishAliens: One of Malacandra's three sapient races is a [[OurDwarvesAreDifferent tapir-headed frogish alien]]. The Eldila, though angelic, are multidimensional energy beings who inhabit the vacuum of space itself.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Subverted. The Old Solar language has a word for sapient creatures of any species: ''hnau''. Humans, Malacandrans, Perelandrans, and Eldila are all hnau - people. As a twist, though, Lewis proposes that the human practice of keeping pets is an expression of our desire for companionship with people who are different creatures from us -- the various Malacandrans find each other silly, amusing and refreshing. Humans talk to cats or dogs and treat them as family members; a Hross goes to hang out with a Pfifltrigg, who can actually talk back.

* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Oyarsa discusses [[CessationOfExistence un-making]] Weston and Devine with Ransom - but ultimately decides against it. The basic idea of the reason for this is that as inhabitants of a different planet, they (so to speak) fall out of his jurisdiction.

* MulticulturalAlienPlanet: The inhabitants of Malacandra come in three different species (not counting the energy beings), each with its own language. Furthermore, the sorns[[note]]in-universe plural is seroni[[/note]] (giant feathered humanoids) come in at least two varieties -- white (in the mountains) and red (in the deserts), and the hrossa (otter-people) come in at least three races -- black, silver, and crested. There might be more, but the viewpoint character wasn't on the planet long enough to tell, as he was vividly aware.

** Deconstructed with the hrossa. The hrossa, who live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, are very friendly to Ransom due to their nobility, but they do him more harm than anyone else by forgetting he can't breathe the thin air up on the high steppe. The sorn astronomer who saves Ransom's life notes that neither he nor the technically minded pfifltriggi would have made such a mistake. The other two species are just as noble, having no concept of evil, yet far more rational.
* NoSuchThingAsSpaceJesus: The scientists who create the first starship are too caught up in materialism to consider that the Oyersu of Malacandra is not an idol or a fraud, but a real spirit empowered by an even realer {{God}}. Their inconsideration costs them humanity's only method of interplanetary travel.

** The seroni (the proper plural of sorn) are reserved and solitary shepherds, whose humour is described as dry and sardonic. They're the philosophers and scientists, more interested in abstract principles than in technology itself.

* HumanoidAliens: The sorns are bipedal likes humans and otherwise structurally similar to humans, besides the feathers, needle-thinness, and the extra four feet they have on us.

* InnocentAliens: The three species of Malacandra live without any FantasticRacism, false religion, or even murder, thanks to their resident eldil keeping their planet from giving into idolatry. It's said humans were once the same, until Earth's eldil cut off contact with the rest of the Solar System and bent humanity to his envious will.
* IntelligentGerbil: The hrossa are quite like sentient seals, only their planet's lighter gravity has made them taller and thinner.

* {{Martians}}: Mars (or Malacandra) is inhabited by three different intelligent species, the otter-like hrossa, the giant feathered sorns (or seroni), and the pfifltriggi (who excel at mining and at building things).
* MightyWhitey: Ransom had some ideas of becoming something like this, but the closest he came was contributing to a hunt for a monster, and even then, he didn't do more to succeed in that hunt than his martian companions did. He also didn't have superior scientific or technical knowledge to the martians, as he was a CunningLinguist rather than a scientist, plus the martians actually had surprisingly advanced scientific knowledge for how little technology they showed. In fact, when the martian scientists sat down to get as much scientific data about Earth as they could from Ransom, ''they'' figured out some scientific knowledge that Ransom himself ''didn't know'', and they managed this by inferring it from information Ransom gave them about other scientific topics that he hadn't realized were related, making this something of an inversion.

* BizarreAlienPsychology: {{Discussed}} by the seorni, who are of the opinion that living on a world with only one sapient species must profoundly narrow our mental horizons by depriving us of the opportunity to compare our own worldviews with those anchored in a different biology and set of instincts.

* CunningLinguist: Ransom is a professor of philology, which helps him to assimilate the Malacandran languages quickly. Notably, he figures out that the hross are sapient beings when he hears one vocalizing and realizes it's not just barking but speaking an actual language.
* {{Deconstruction}}: Weston's motivation for the colonization of Mars is [[SpeciesLoyalty the survival of the human race]], even if this means killing all the natives of Mars. Or killing any humans who stand in his way. The conversation with Oyarsa picks this philosophy to pieces. This aspect was most likely intended by Lewis as a rebuttal to Olaf Stapeldon's novel ''Literature/LastAndFirstMen'', which (arguably) condoned the genocide of native Venusians as necessary for humanity's survival, though Weston's clownish antics earlier poke fun at colonialism generally.

* {{God}}: Ransom learns the Martians worship a being called Maleldil. There is no dispute that Maleldil is on Mars, although the intellectual sorns have a more abstract understanding of him than the more artistic hrossa. They all agree he is a spirit without bodies or parts (which the sorns attribute to an extreme form of FasterThanLightTravel) that created everything in the world and assigned the ''Oyeresu'' to watch over the planets. Ransom realizes with time that Maleldil is who on Earth is called UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} and in ''Literature/{{Perelandra}}'' that Venusians know He is one with his Father and "the Third One."

* SpaceIsCold: Averted. All the space travel remains in the inner solar system (from Earth to Mars and back), so the sun is relatively near to Weston's spaceship, always visible, making things very hot within the ship. When Ransom comments, "I always thought space was dark and cold," he is met with scorn for his naivete. "Forgot about the Sun, did you?". On the return trip from Malacandra to Earth, where Weston and Devine have to cut inside the orbit of Venus to get back to Earth in time, they very nearly cook to death before they get past the Sun and start back outwards.

** In the introduction Lewis explains he knew that telescopes had shown there were no canals on Mars, but he put them there anyway because they were part of the popular lore about the planet. It was already out of date by the time it came out, scientifically, but it made for a good story and effort was at least made to try justifying some of it. (Such as the 'canals'-- Ransom watches during liftoff and finds that their appearance depends on how he's looking at the ground. Given that the original reports were 'optical illusions' that depended on how you looked at Mars...)

* SpaceIsCold: Averted. All the space travel remains in the inner solar system (from Earth to Mars and back), so the sun is relatively near to Weston's spaceship, always visible, making things very hot within the ship. When Ransom comments, "I always thought space was dark and cold," he is met with scorn for his naivete. "Forgot about the Sun, did you?". On the return trip from Malacandra to Earth, where Weston and Devine have to cut inside the orbit of Venus to get back to Earth in time. They very nearly cook to death before they get past the Sun and start back outwards.

** The hrossa are warrior-poets and musicians prone to flamboyant action and speech; their humour consisting predominantly of [[JustForPun elaborate wordplays]]. They take great joy in hunting dangerous animals face to face, and composing epic poems; but are prone to overlook simple practicalities. Likely inspired by the style of the Scandanavian ''Literature/PoeticEdda'', ''Literature/ProseEdda'' and ''Literature/TheIcelandicSagas''.

* AbsoluteXenophobe: Weston has no problem shooting Hyoi (who as a hross looks [[IntelligentGerbil seal-like]] and not humanoid like Weston expected) on sight without bothering whether he may be murdering a sentinent person. Even later when he ''knows'' the victim was a person just as he is, he shows no remorse and maintains that the only life of [[InhumanableAlienRights value]] is human life. Later still it becomes clear he ''doesn't'' even value individual human lives; or even the human species as it now is, but just that ''some'' creature that has some origin in humanity (however vague) continues to conquer and plunder.

* SacrificialLion: Hyoi, the first Malacandran Ransom meets and his best friend for the time spent there (everyone is friendly to him, but Hyoi becomes ''his friend'') [[spoiler: is shot dead show how humans are not all nice]].

* InnocentAliens: The three species of Malacandra live without any FantasticRacism, false religion, or even murder, thanks to their resident eldil keeping their planet from giving into idolatry. Its said humans were once the same, until Earth's eldil cut off contact with the rest of the Solar System and bent humanity to his envious will.

* NotSoDifferent: Invoked by Oyarsa: he noticed that Ransom was quite afraid at meeting him, and told Ransom that the human mind and eldil mind were both created in God's image, so their psychology at least wouldn't be so alien.

* GoodCannotComprehendEvil: Downplayed; the Oyarsa of Mars only wanted to speak to Weston and Devine to get some information from the about what was going on on Earth, but the two of them fled back to Earth and kidnapped Ransom to go in their place. This and other behavior on their part completely baffled Oyarsa, even going so far as to make him wonder if those two were brain-damaged. Only after a lengthy questioning and hearing a (very much deconstructed) explanation of their colonial ideas did Oyarsa come to understand them, and during that interrogation, Oyarsa kept finding new and surprising levels of genius and insanity in them.

* InhumanableAlienRights: Both played straight with what rights Weston and Devine think a non-human should be afforded (none); and inverted in how the Martians in turn treat the alien human visitors to their world. By contrast to the aforementioned, the Martians are actually perfectly moral and have no difficulties acknowledging the full personhood of a human (just like every other ''hnau''[[note]]person[[/note]]). Weston is given a fair trial for the murder of Hyoi. The Martians also realise that Ransom was abducted by the other two against his will, so is just as much of a victim of their havoc as their Martian victims, instead of being in any way responsible. The only thing they blame him for is [[PoorCommunicationKills not coming to them for help]] against them.

* AbsoluteXenophobe: Weston has no problem shooting Hyoi (who as a hross looks otterlike and not humanoid like Weston expected) on sight without bothering whether he may be murdering a sentinent person. Even later when he ''knows'' the victim was a person just as he is, he shows no remorse and maintains that the only life of [[InhumanableAlienRights value]] is human life. Later still it becomes clear he ''doesn't'' even value individual human lives; or even the human species as it now is, but just that ''some'' creature that has some origin in humanity (however vague) continues to conquer and plunder.

* AbsoluteXenophobe: Weston has no problem shooting a living being on sight without bothering whether he may be murdering a sentinent person. Even later when he ''knows'' the victim was a person just as he is, he shows no remorse and maintains that the only life of [[InhumanableAlienRights value]] is human life. Later still it becomes clear he ''doesn't'' even value individual human lives; or even the human species as it now is, but just that ''some'' creature that has some origin in humanity (however vague) continues to conquer and plunder.

* AbsoluteXenophobe: Weston has no problem shooting a living being on sight without bothering whether he may be murdering a sentinent person. Even later when he ''knows'' the victim was as sentient as he is, he has no regrets and maintains that the only life of [[InhumanableAlienRights value]] is human life. Later still it becomes clear he ''doesn't'' even value individual human lives; or even the human species as it now is, but just that ''some'' creature that has some origin in humanity (however vague) continues to conquer and plunder.

* AbsoluteXenophobe: Weston has no problem shooting a living being on sight without bothering whether he may be murdering a sentinent person. Even later when he ''knows'' the creature was as sentient as he is, he has no regrets and maintains that the only life of [[InhumanableAlienRights value]] is human life. Later still it becomes clear he ''doesn't'' even value individual human lives; or even the human species as it now is, but just that ''some'' creature that has some origin in humanity (however vague) continues to conquer and plunder.

* AbsoluteXenophobe: Weston has no problem shooting the second species he sees on Mars without bothering to ascertain its intelligence. Even when he's told the creature was as sentient as he is, he has no regrets and maintains that the only thing of value is the Human species. It becomes clear he doesn't value individual human lives or even the human being as it now is, but just that some creature that has some origin in humanity continues to conquer and plunder.

* YouNoTakeCandle: Weston gives a philosophical speech in English with some very stirring rhetoric; Ransom translates it into Old Solar, but he can only get across the basic ideas, not the rhetoric. The ideas ''are'' accurately conveyed, more or less, but stripped of their high-minded vocabulary they sound banal, or outright barbaric; when Weston says that "Life itself is more valuable than any system of morality," Ransom admits to Oyarsa that he has literally no idea how to say this in Malacandrian, and flails around for an adequate translation before arriving at the rough equivalency: "It is better to be alive and bent than to be dead."

* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Done deliberately with Weston. In his essay "Reply to Professor Haldane", Lewis himself notes the weak point that although "Weston, for the sake of the plot, has to be a physicist, his interests seem to be exclusively biological," and he points out that he was intending the story to be more fantastical than hard sci-fi. ''Literature/{{Perelandra}}'' has Weston state that [[{{Handwave}} he started as a physicist, then became a biologist, but it's implied to have happened between books.

* LanguageEqualsThought: Sin is such an alien concept to the sinless non-Earth aliens that Ransom had considerable difficulty finding proper terms to translate it and related concepts.

** Deconstructed with the hrossa. The hrossa, who live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, are very friendly to Ransom due to their nobility, but they do him more harm than anyone else by forgetting he can't breathe the thin air up on the high steppe. The sorn astronomer who saves his life bemoans that neither he nor the technically minded pfifltriggi would have made such a mistake. The other two species are just as noble, being sinless, yet far more rational.

* ArtisticLicense:
** In the introduction Lewis explains he knew that telescopes had shown there were no canals on Mars, but he put them there anyway because they were part of the popular lore about the planet.

* AuthorTract: ''Out Of The Silent Planet'' is a fictionalized precursor of Lewis' essay "Religion and Rocketry", describing how extraterrestrial life doesn't contradict Christian theology. It is also a deconstruction of the colonial ideals often found in sci-fi of the time through the "judgement scene," where Weston has to attempt to justify his worldview to an angel that doesn't speak his language. He needs to resort to the interpretive services of Ransom, who can only convey his speech very simplistically, and who is not necessarily sympathetic to many of his opinions. The obvious point is that, stripped of rhetorical flourish, many of Weston's seemingly high-minded ideals start to sound almost barbaric.

* UsefulNotes/{{Mars}}: Although Ransom doesn't at first know Malacandra is Mars. It was already out of date by the time it came out, scientifically, but it made for a good story and effort was at least made to ''try'' justifying some of it. (Such as the 'canals'-- Ransom watches during liftoff and finds that their appearance depends on how he's looking at the ground. Given that the original reports were 'optical illusions' that depended on how you looked at Mars...)

* NobleSavage: Subverted. Originally, Weston and Devine consider the native Malacandrans to be primitive tribespeople, and when Ransom discovers their highly-developed cultural achievements, he thinks they fit this trope. But he later learns that they are actually a great deal more advanced than they appear, and simply don't bother doing a number of things they are capable of because they don't see any need to. (For one, their lower gravity makes them a great deal less concerned with the moving of weights than Earth people.)
** Also deconstructed, just a little. The hrossa, who live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, are very friendly to Ransom due to their nobility, but they do him more harm than anyone else by forgetting he can't breathe the thin air up on the high steppe. The sorn astronomer who saves his life bemoans that neither he nor the technically minded pfifltriggi would have made such a mistake. The other two species are just as noble, being sinless, yet far more rational.

* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Done deliberately with Weston. In his essay "Reply to Professor Haldane", Lewis himself notes the weak point that although "Weston, for the sake of the plot, has to be a physicist, his interests seem to be exclusively biological," and he points out that he was intending the story to be more fantastical than hard sci-fi.[[note]]''Literature/{{Perelandra}}'' has Weston state that [[{{Handwave}} he started as a physicist, then became a biologist]], but it's implied to have happened between books, not before this one.[[/note]]

* PlanetOfHats: Descriptions of the three races of Malacandra tend to embody this trope.
** The hrossa are warrior-poets and musicians prone to flamboyant action and speech; their humour consisting predominantly of [[JustForPun elaborate wordplays]]. They take great joy in hunting dangerous animals face to face, and composing epic poems; but are prone to overlook simple practicalities. Likely inspired by the style of the Scandanavian Literature/{{Edda}}s and [[Literature/TheIcelandicSagas Sagas]].

* {{Planetville}}: Averted via LampshadeHanging: as Ransom leaves Malacandra, he realizes what a tiny portion of the planet he actually saw, and discusses the great varieties of beings he never got to see in the afterword.

* TheRightOfASuperiorSpecies: Weston, the villain of the first book and an archetypical Creator/HGWells character, sincerely believes that humanity's continual industrialization justifies slaughtering the "barbaric" people of Malacandra. When pushed on his logic, he proclaims no killing is unlawful if it means something called "man" (since they may change their body or mind in the name of Progress) survives. The Oyarsa identifies this as classic case of [[SingleIssueWonk a single duty (love for own species) being isolated from all the great laws of goodness until it becomes evil]].

* SpaceIsCold: {{Averted}}. All the space travel remains in the inner solar system (from Earth to Mars and back), so the sun is relatively near to Weston's spaceship, always visible, making things very hot within the ship. When Ransom comments, "I always thought space was dark and cold," he is met with scorn for his naivete. "Forgot about the Sun, did you?"
** Particularly {{Averted}} on the return trip from Malacandra to Earth, where Weston and Devine have to cut inside the orbit of Venus (and possibly even Mercury) to get back to Earth in time. They very nearly cook to death before they get past the Sun and start back outwards.

* TechnoBabble: Weston dismissively explains his spaceship works by "exploiting some of the less observed properties of solar radiation." (WordOfGod explained this as an obvious HandWave, as the mechanics of space travel are not really the point; in ''Literature/{{Perelandra}}'' Ransom's space travel is accomplished not by science but by angels.)

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Subverted. The Old Solar language has a word for sapient creatures of any species: ''hnau''. Humans, Malacandrans, Perelandrans, and Eldila are all hnau - people. As an interesting twist, though, Lewis proposes that the human practice of keeping pets is an expression of our desire for companionship with people who are different creatures from us -- the various Malacandrans find each other silly, amusing and refreshing. Humans talk to cats or dogs and treat them as family members; a Hross goes to hang out with a Pfifltrigg, who can actually talk back.

* HumanoidAliens: The sorn are bipedal likes humans and otherwise structurally similar to humans, besides the feathers, needle-thinness, and the extra four feet they have on us.

* HumanoidAliens: The sornsare bipedal likes humans and otherwise structurally similar to humans, besides the feathers, needle-thinness, and the extra four feet they have on us.

* {{Deconstruction}}: Weston's motivation for the colonization of Mars is the survival of the human race, even if this means killing all the natives of Mars. Or killing any humans who stand in his way. The conversation with Oyarsa picks this philosophy to pieces. This aspect was most likely intended by Lewis as a rebuttal to Olaf Stapeldon's novel ''Literature/LastAndFirstMen'', which (arguably) condoned the genocide of native Venusians as necessary for humanity's survival, though Weston's clownish antics earlier poke fun at colonialism generally.

* StarfishAliens: One of Malacandra's three sapient races is a [[OurDwarvesAreDifferent tapir-headed frogish aliens]]. The Eldila, though angelic, are multidimensional energy beings who inhabit the vacuum of space itself.