Professor Weston (full name Edward Rolles Weston) is a Satanic character in C. S. Lewis's The Space Trilogy. He is introduced in the trilogy's first book, Out of the Silent Planet (1938), as an eminent physicist who has invented space travel. He is defeated by the novel's protagonist Elwin Ransom on Mars (known to its inhabitants as "Malacandra"). Weston returns in the second book, in an attempt to wreak havoc on Venus (Perelandra), the "new Eden." Imperialism on Malacandra In Out of the Silent Planet, Weston first appears with his accomplice, Dick Devine (the future Lord Feverstone in That Hideous Strength), attempting to abduct a mentally impaired young man named Harry, whom Weston considers subhuman and disposable. They plan to take him to Malacandra (Mars) as a human sacrifice to Oyarsa, its ruling angel. It is then that they are surprised by a chance visit by Elwin Ransom, the main character of the novel, who is an old schoolmate of Devine. Ransom grows suspicious of their activities, and Devine persuades Weston to abduct Ransom instead. Shortly after landing on Malacandra, Weston and Devine attempt to drag Ransom to the servants of Oyarsa, but a particular incident distracts them, and Ransom escapes. In the course of his adventures on Malacandra, Ransom learns that the Oyarsa, the being to whom he was supposedly to be sacrificed, wanted only to speak with a human to learn of the conditions on Earth, the 'Silent Planet'. The "civilized' Weston cannot understand this, expecting only savagery from "primitive" cultures. It is eventually revealed that the immediate purpose of Weston's and Devine's journey to Malacandra is to mine Malacandra's abundant gold. This is the only motive of the mercenary Devine, but Weston's plan is to open a new age of space colonization to ensure the eternal survival of the human race, an idea borrowed from Stapledon's Last and First Men. The seeming humanitarianism of Weston's scheme is corrupted by his contemptuous and colonialist attitude towards all other forms of life, including the humane and intelligent Malacandrans. Colonising Eden, in the name of Universal Spirit In Perelandra, the sudden arrival of Weston's spaceship on Venus is a great surprise to the self-doubting Ransom, who himself has been sent by an oyarsa to counter a mysterious threat. Weston has undergone a philosophical conversion since his near-death in returning from Mars: he considers his former devotion to the human race