Out of the Silent Planet Robert McClenaghan writes, ""Out of the Silent Planet", the shortest and most straightforward of the [Space Trilogy] books, incorporates many of the elements of classic science fiction, including a space flight, meetings with fantastic aliens, and an extended depiction of another planet. Were it not for the theological backdrop (which comes into focus only toward the story's end), "Out of the Silent Planet" could pass as merely a well-written and exceptionally erudite pulp novel." John Gosling, on his website devoted to "The War of the Worlds", wrote that the novel "is a very well written and important piece of Martian
A Beautiful Planet as "The Great Dying"). Like the force fields which protect fictional spaceships from damage, Spaceship Earth has a very real magnetic field which prevents cosmic rays and the stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun from harming living beings on Earth. In the narrative words of "A Beautiful Planet", the glowing, curtain-like auroras that the astronauts admire in the film "show that shield in action. Because we have this magical magnetic field protecting us, we have our forests, and oceans, animals, and people. It's why ours is a planet of life." Our neighboring planet Mars, on the other hand,