Out of the Silent Planet

Philologist Elwin Ransom, on a walking tour of the English countryside, falls in with some slightly shady characters from his old University and wakes up suddenly to find himself naked in a metal ball in the middle of the light-filled heavens, on his way to a world called by its natives Malacandra, where he will learn why the other inhabitants of the solar system call our world Thulcandra... the Silent Planet.