Perelandra

Perelandra (also titled Voyage to Venus in a later edition published by Pan Books) is the second book in the Space Trilogy of C. S. Lewis. It takes up the story of the philologist Ransom after his return from Mars at the end of Out of the Silent Planet. With angelic help, he travels to Venus to oppose the diabolically inspired human physicist Weston in a struggle for the souls of a new Adam and Eve in a new Eden. (The third volume of the trilogy, That Hideous Strength, is set on Earth.)

Perelandra was published in 1943, one year after A Preface to Paradise Lost, and it deals with many of the same issues: the value of hierarchy, the dullness of Satan, and the nature of unfallen sexuality, for instance. To an extent, it can be viewed as a commentary on Milton's poem but a commentary which is intelligible to a reader ignorant of the original.