Elwin Ransom

Elwin Ransom is the prominent character from C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy series. He is the main character in the books Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, which are told almost entirely from his point of view. He is also a major character in the third book, That Hideous Strength, in which he plays a director of an organization resisting the demonic take-over of the world, though his role is that of mentor in the book, with the main characters arguably being Mark and Jane Studdock.

Lewis' books belong to the unique genre which can be characterized as "Theological science fiction" or "Christian science fiction", i. e., they assume the basic tenets of Christianity are factually true: God exists and He created the Universe and watches over everybody; Adam and Eve were real persons, the ancestors of everybody, and they were tempted by The Serpent/Satan to disobey God - with very serious consequences; Jesus really is the Son of God and He truly died on the cross in order to redeem Humanity; Satan is present, trying all the time to tempt people into selling him their souls, and those who are so tempted suffer a very terrible Perdition; and so on. With the tenents of Christianity being accepted as fact, the story then moves on to various sci-fi tropes within that framework.

The factual veracity of all this is a basic premise on which the books' plot depends - though the reader is introduced to this premise gradually. In the first book, only hints are given which the reader must decode; but by the second part God, Satan and various Angels all step onstage and take a direct, visible and substantial part in the unfolding plot.

The character of Dr. Elwin Ransom is fundamental in conveying Lewis' message - i.e., to tell his 20th Century British reader that the Bible is not about things which happened to exotic people in the Middle East thousands of years ago. Rather, such things are equally real and could equally happen in the here-and-now - in token of which Lewis proceeds to show in detail how they do happen to an ordinary Englishman of the middle Twentieth Century, a Cambridge don who is likable but a very fallible human being.

By the third book, Ransom has been transformed by his experiences into an awe-inspiring Prophet or Saint, who is seen from the outside. The role of conveying to the reader that supernatural Bible-like things can happen to ordinary people in the here-and-now is transferred to a couple of younger and even more fallible scholars from whose point of view the story is then told.