C.S. Lewis’s allegorical sci-fi trilogy about a philology professor’s adventures on Mars, Venus and Earth

Featuring a reluctant hero’s extraordinary journey through the cosmos, C. S. Lewis’s classic trilogy contains all the magic, invention, humour and big ideas of his Narnia novels. Thrilling, mystical and evocative, it mixes theology and mythology to tell the epic story of an interplanetary struggle between good and evil. This collection includes Alex Jennings’ unabridged readings of Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, and a stunning full-cast adaptation of That Hideous Strength, starring Anneika Rose and Joel MacCormack.

Out of the Silent Planet – While out on a walk, Cambridge academic Dr Ransom calls at a mysterious house to take shelter, only to find himself captive on a spaceship headed for Malacandra – the red planet he knows as Mars. His intended fate is to be a human sacrifice, but he escapes, meets the various alien inhabitants – and learns how Earth, the ‘silent planet’, was corrupted and cut off from the rest of the Solar System...

Perelandra – Returned from Mars, Ransom is sent on a mission to the beautiful paradise planet of Perelandra, or Venus. There, he encounters floating islands, bubble trees and The Green Lady, an Eve figure tempted by Satan in the form of Ransom’s old enemy, Dr Weston. Forced into a desperate confrontation, can Ransom preserved the purity of this Eden-like world?

That Hideous Strength – Set in an exhausted Britain in the late 1940s, this ‘modern fairy tale for grown-ups’ warns of a world where technocrats are kings. The newly established National Institute for Coordinated Experiments seems to promise a bright future. But Jane is tormented by terrible nightmares about a severed head that speaks. She tries to talk to her husband Mark, but he is preoccupied with his work at the University. Then Mark's college sell Bragdon Wood to NICE, and he is offered a job at the organisation. An ancient myth claims that Merlin is buried under the wood – could that be why NICE is so keen to own it?

Credits
Out of the Silent Planet by CS Lewis © 1938 CS Lewis Pte Ltd., Perelandra by CS Lewis ©1944 CS Lewis Pte Ltd., That Hideous Strength by CS Lewis © 1945 CS Lewis Pte Ltd.

Out of the Silent Planet
Read by Alex Jennings
First broadcast BBC 7, 2-18 February 2004

Perelandra
Read by Alex Jennings
First broadcast BBC 7, 14 February-9 March 2005

That Hideous Strength
Jane – Anneika Rose
Mark – Joel MacCormack
Curry/Ransom – Oliver Hembrough
Feverstone/Briers – Simon Armstrong
Hardcastle – Jane Slavin
Mrs Dimble – Siobhan Redmond
Grace – Jane Gurnett
Wither – Matthew Bulgo
Frost/Hingest – David Menkin
Alcasan/Taxi Driver – Kiren Kebaili-Dwyer
Merlin – Ifan Huw Dafydd
Dramatised by Melissa Murray
Production co-ordinators: Lindsay Rees and Eleri Sydney McAuliffe
Sound design by Catherine Robinson and Nigel Lewis
Directed by John Norton and Emma Harding
A BBC Audio Wales production
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 26 January – 2 February 2025