The First Men in the Moon (1901)

A sort of Trip to the Moon meets First Contact story. Amazing to think it was written in 1901. It was probably hard SF of its day and even now sounds very plausible in its ideas except obviously for life on the moon. ( )

I haven't read this book, yet and I have found it very funny and interesting. I have liked very much the characters, the society implications and the Tesla and Marconi references. ( )

Rereading H.G. Wells has been quite an experience. When I first read this one, I remember, I was most impressed by the adventure story. This time around, 45 years later, I was struck by Wells' humor. There were times I almost laughed out loud while reading, a reaction not to the pseudo-science but to Wells deft handling of social satire and irony. A very good read. ( )

This was decent, but it didn't hold me. I'm trying to give various classic scifi authors a try, though. Is there a Wells anyone recommends?

Following his success with The Invisible Man, The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, H G Wells turned his attention to space travel. Like his three previous novels; First Men in the Moon is firmly set in late Victorian England and it is an unconventional scientist who once again proves to be the catalyst for the story. Mr Cavor working in his country house with a team of untrained assistants, invents a material that negates the effects of gravity, which he names Cavorite. His lonely walks along the sea front attract the attention of Bedford, a bankrupt business man and the two men soon become associates and so starts their mad adventures fuelled by a sort of comic book fantasy that is never remotely believable.

The two men are soon hard at work in Cavor’s backyard building a space capsule which will feature window shutters made of Cavorite with which they will be able to manipulate in such a way as to escape the earth’s gravitational pull and fly to the moon. Today this sounds like pure hokum and it cannot have sounded any better in 1901 when Well’s book was published. This is what Well’s astronaughts were wearing inside their sphere:

“The interior was warm, the thermometer stood at eighty, and as we should lose little or none of this by radiation, we were dressed in shoes and thin flannels. We had however, a bundle of thick woollen clothing and several thick blankets to guard against mischance.”

They did take some oxygen cylinders, but these were not needed when they found breathable atmosphere on the moon. Yes of course they made it to the moon and with some desperate manoeuvrings with the Cavorite blinds managed to land safely enough. This is Mr Cavor on the moon enjoying it’s lesser gravitational pull:

“Good we cried to each other ‘Good’ and Cavor made three steps and went off to a tempting slope of snow a good twenty yards and more beyond. I stood for a moment struck by the grotesque effect of his soaring figure - his dirty cricket cap, and spiky hair, his little round body, his arms and his knicker-bockered legs tucked up tightly - against the weird spaciousness of the lunar scene. A gust of laughter seized me, and then I stepped off to follow. Plump! I dropped beside him.”

Wells is having tremendous fun with his “Boys Own” adventure and this is the main problem with his book. There are some passages where the characters reflect on the folly of man and his rapacious needs and there is the juxtaposition between the two characters, but I never got the sense that this is what the book was really about. The story is told by Bedford in the first person, now safely back on earth and so we realise that at least one of the adventurers lived to tell the tale.

Our two unlikely protagonists find life on the moon which is a honeycomb of tunnels and caves inhabited by the Selenites: sort of intelligent ant like beings. It is Cavor by his dispatches from the moon that describes their society their natural history and finally his meeting with their ruler: The Grand Lunar.

First Men in the Moon has the feel of a pot boiler; Wells seems here to have taken his fantasy writing as far as it would go and is stretching all bounds of possibility with this novel. It is however never dull and Well’s easy flowing style carries the reader along with him. It is amusing and if you don’t mind the silly story it is a fun read. 3 stars. ( )