The First Men in the Moon by the English author H. G. Wells is a science fiction novel about a journey to the Moon by two Englishmen who discover that a sophisticated extraterrestrial civilisation of insect-like creatures ("Selenites") inhabits the lunar interior. The first-person narrator Mr. Bedford, a businessman, recounts his adventure with an eccentric scientist (Mr. Cavor), who has invented a gravity-blocking substance (cavorite) that the pair then use to construct a spherical spacecraft to reach the Moon, hoping to find valuable minerals. The work was originally serialised in The Strand Magazine (UK) and The Cosmopolitan (USA) from November 1900 to June 1901 and was published in hardcover book form in 1901. Wells called it one of his "fantastic stories".H. G. Wells, "Preface", in Seven Famous Novels (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934, p. vii). Wells considered this category of work, which in his oeuvre also includes The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The Food of the Gods, and In the Days of the Comet, to be "a class of writing which includes the Golden Ass of Apuleius, the True Histories of Lucian, Peter Schlemil and the story of Frankenstein . . . they do not aim to project a serious possibility; they aim indeed only at the same amount of conviction as one gets in a good gripping dream. They have to hold the reader to the end by art and illusion and not by proof and argument, and the moment he closes the cover and reflects he wakes up to their impossibility" (ibid.).
The novel is a major work in the long history of the Moon in science fiction, which dates back to classical antiquity and includes earlier encounters with lunar beings and civilisations, often satirical in nature. The scientific inspiration in large part would come from Jules Verne and his book From the Earth to the Moon in 1865, which used a cannon shot to launch a spacecraft with a human crew, and the sequel Around the Moon in 1869 about the lunar journey and return to Earth—both works use the word "Selenites" to describe possible inhabitants of the Moon.
Underlying its scientific fantasy elements, the novel presents a dystopian satirical vision of an extremely regimented, intricately planned hierarchical society among the Selenites, divided into specialised roles in which individuals have strictly limited and predetermined lives for the good of the system. In the preface to the 1933 UK collected volume The Scientific Romances of H.G. Wells (published in different form as Seven Famous Novels in the US in 1934), Wells explained: "In The First Men in the Moon I tried an improvement on Jules Verne's shot, in order to look at mankind from a distance and burlesque the effects of specialisation". Comparable to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the book appears to be an introspective reductio of Wells' own eugenic and especially socialist ideals in favor of more nuanced versions.Pringle, David (1997). Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: The Definitive Illustrated Guide. Carlton Books Ltd, p. 239
The First Men in the Moon has been critically praised for its combination of action and adventure with social satire and criticism, enhanced by fully developed characters in Bedford and Cavor, elements of humor, and its vivid descriptions of unearthly places and alien beings.
Plot summary
The narrator is a London businessman named Bedford who withdraws to the countryside to write a play, by which he hopes to alleviate his financial problems. Bedford rents a small countryside house in Lympne, in Kent, where he wants to work in peace. He is bothered every afternoon, however, at precisely the same time, by a passer-by making odd noises. After two weeks Bedford accosts the man, who proves to be a reclusive physicist named Mr. Cavor. Bedford befriends Cavor when he learns he is developing a new material, cavorite, which can negate the force of gravity. Bedford sees in the commercial production of cavorite a possible source of "wealth enough to work any sort of social revolution we fancied; we might own and order the whole world".The First Men in the Moon, Ch. 1.
When a sheet of cavorite is prematurely processed, it makes the air above it weightless then shoots off into space, causing a violent, destructive windstorm in the local area. Bedford speculates that had the sheet of cavorite remained in place, the entire atmosphere of Earth could have been sucked up like a fountain and stripped from the planet, killing all life.The First Men in the Moon, Ch. 2. Cavor hits upon the idea of a spherical spaceship made of "steel, lined with glass", and with sliding "windows or blinds" made of cavorite by which it can be steered, and persuades Bedford to help in the construction. Cavor suggests prospecting for valuable minerals on the Moon. Bedford sees an opportunity for huge wealth in developing a space travel business with cavorite-propelled spheres and liners, along with creating a monopoly on the mineral wealth of other planets. After reluctance with last minute doubts, he agrees to accompany Cavor on his voyage to the Moon.The First Men in the Moon, Ch. 3. They pack oxygen and other supplies.The First Men in the Moon, Ch. 4. On the way to the Moon, they experience weightlessness, which Bedford finds "exceedingly restful". Cavor is certain there is no life there.The First Men in the Moon, Ch. 5
On the surface of the Moon the two men discover a desolate landscape, but as the Sun rises, the thin, frozen atmosphere vaporises and strange plants begin to grow with extraordinary rapidity. Bedford and Cavor leave the capsule, but in romping about in the much lower gravity get lost in the rapidly growing jungle. They hear for the first time a mysterious booming coming from beneath their feet. They encounter "great beasts", "monsters of mere fatness", that they dub "mooncalves", and five-foot-high "Selenites" tending them. At first they hide and crawl about, but growing hungry partake of some "monstrous coralline growths" of fungus that inebriate them.
They wander drunkenly until they encounter a party of six extraterrestrials, who capture them.The First Men in the Moon, Ch. 10. The insectoid lunar natives (referred to as "Selenites", after Selene, the Greek moon goddess) are part of a complex and technologically sophisticated society that lives underground, but this is revealed only in radio communications received from Cavor after Bedford's return to Earth.
Bedford and Cavor break out of captivity beneath the surface of the Moon and flee, with Bedford killing several Selenites. In their flight they discover that gold is common on the Moon. In their attempt to find their way back to the surface and to their sphere, they come upon some Selenites carving up mooncalves but Bedford fight their way past. Back on the surface, they split up to search for their spaceship. Bedford finds it just as the lunar night creeps in but returns to Earth without Cavor, who injured himself in a fall and was recaptured by the Selenites, as Bedford learns from a hastily scribbled note he left behind.
Chapter 20, "Mr. Bedford in Infinite Space", plays no role in the plot but is a remarkable set piece in which the narrator describes experiencing a quasi-mystical "pervading doubt of my own identity. . . the doubts within me could still argue: 'It is not you that is reading, it is Bedford—but you are not Bedford, you know. That's just where the mistake comes in.' 'Confound it!' I cried, 'and if I am not Bedford, what am I? But in that direction no light was forthcoming, though the strangest fancies came drifting into my brain, queer remote suspicions like shadow seen from far away... Do you know I had an idea that really I was something quite outside not only the world, but all worlds, and out of space and time, and that this poor Bedford was just a peephole through which I looked at life..."The First Men in the Moon, Ch. 19. The unnamed narrator of The War of the Worlds experiences a similar sense of self-alienation.
By good fortune, the narrator lands in the sea off the coast of Britain, near the seaside town of Littlestone, not far from his point of departure. His fortune is made by some gold he brings back, but he loses the sphere when a curious boy named Tommy Simmons climbs into the unattended sphere and shoots off into space.The First Men in the Moon, Ch. 21. Bedford writes and publishes his story in The Strand Magazine and assumes Cavor is dead. However, he is astonished nearly two years later when he learns that "Mr. Julius Wendigee, a Dutch electrician, who has been experimenting with certain apparatus akin to the apparatus used by Mr. Tesla in America", has picked up fragments of wireless telegraphy from Cavor sent from inside the Moon. The messages in the form of letter code are often broken up and incomplete but nonetheless relate detailed information. During a period of relative freedom Cavor has taught two Selenites English and learned much about lunar society.The First Men in the Moon, Ch. 22.
Cavor's broadcasts provide details about the structure of the Moon, which has been greatly modified by the Selenites. The round lunar surface features that earthly astronomers interpret as "craters" or as volcanoes are in fact artificial lidded openings that lead to a giant system of artificial shafts and tunnels extending deep below the exterior and that "the whole of the moon's substance for a hundred miles inward, indeed, is a mere sponge of rock" linking natural and artificial galleries and caverns. Cavor finds that the subsurface is lit by streams and cascades of water—"no doubt containing some phosphorescent organism"—that flows down toward the Lunar Central Sea, which lies nearly 200 miles below the exterior surface and which glows "like luminous blue milk that is just on the boil". The Selenites' cities lie above this Central Sea. The atmosphere circulates through the tunnels and caverns, driven by the alternate heating and cooling of the surface and the outer galleries as the Moon goes through phases of day and night.The First Men in the Moon, Ch. 23.
Cavor's account explains that Selenites exist in hundreds of forms, many with a particular exaggerated physical feature suited to a single function, such as an enlarged arm or tentacle, or a highly developed smelling organ. Without a confining rigid bony skull, Selenite brains are able to grow continuously, and intellectual functionaries have greatly enlarged brains but reduced physical bodies. They are aided by special attendants whose only role is to support them and help them move about.The First Men in the Moon, Ch. 24.
A Selenite finds fulfilment in carrying out the specific social function or task for which each has been brought up or modified. Specialisation is the essence of Selenite society: "And so it is with all sorts and conditions of Selenites—each is a perfect unit in a world machine..." Cavor learns that when members of society who perform a particular function are not needed, they are drugged and deposited on the ground in a dormant state in a huge area where giant fungus is grown for food. These superfluous members of society will be revived when it is determined that they are needed again. He reflects that: "To drug the worker one does not want and toss him aside is surely far better than to expel him from his factory to wander starving in the streets".