In our penultimate Silent Planet episode, we reach the climax of the book in which Weston confronts Oyarsa and has to take some tough medicine and we return back to Earth and England and finish up with a “pint of bitter”.

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Ransom makes it to Medilorn and comes face to face with Oyarsa. Misunderstandings abound and humans come out not looking all that great.

The short story we reference in the discussion is called “Forms of Things Unknown”. It’s released in the collection “Of Other Worlds”.

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Ransom engages in something between a hunt and a battle with an extraterrestrial shark and ends up finally meeting the dreaded Sorns. We talk a bit about the mythology of Malacandra and non-heroic protagonists.

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In these chapters Ransom gets to know the “natives” and discovers a culture that is both remarkably similar and different from anything on Earth. Conversations about life, death, religion, and pleasure ensue.

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Ransom makes it to Malacandra and promptly flees. After wandering through the Malacandran landscape and fighting off fits of madness, he has his first real encounter with one of the native, sentient species, a Hross.

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