Perelandra

The second of the Ransom novels, published by John Lane at The Bodley Head in London in 1943; some later editions carried the title Voyage to Venus. Ransom is sent to Perelandra, the planet Venus, a world of warm oceans and floating islands where a newly created human pair live in innocence. The Green Lady, its first woman, has been given one command; Weston arrives, his body taken over by an evil power, and argues day after day for her disobedience, while Ransom tries to answer him and finally understands that he must act. The novel is a retelling of the temptation in Eden in which the Fall does not happen, and it closes with a visionary celebration of the cosmic order. Its long debates draw on Lewis's reading of Milton, on whom he had just published A Preface to Paradise Lost.