In their flight they discover that gold is common on the Moon. 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.īedford and Cavor break out of captivity beneath the surface of the Moon and flee, killing several Selenites. They wander drunkenly until they encounter a party of six extraterrestrials, who capture them. At first they hide and crawl about, but growing hungry partake of some "monstrous coralline growths" of fungus that inebriate them. They encounter "great beasts", "monsters of mere fatness", that they dub "mooncalves", and five-foot-high "Selenites" tending them. They hear for the first time a mysterious booming coming from beneath their feet. Bedford and Cavor leave the capsule, but in romping about get lost in the rapidly growing jungle. 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. On the way to the Moon, they experience weightlessness, which Bedford finds "exceedingly restful". 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 a reluctant Bedford to undertake a voyage to the Moon Cavor is certain there is no life there. 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". When a sheet of cavorite is prematurely processed, it makes the air above it weightless and shoots off into space. Bedford befriends Cavor when he learns he is developing a new material, cavorite, which can negate the force of gravity. After two weeks Bedford accosts the man, who proves to be a reclusive physicist named Mr. He is bothered every afternoon, however, at precisely the same time, by a passer-by making odd noises. Bedford rents a small countryside house in Lympne, in Kent, where he wants to work in peace. 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. Plot summary Ĭaption: "I was progressing in great leaps and bounds" In that opera the word "selenites" is used for the first time for moon inhabitants. The inspiration seems to come from the famous 1870 book by Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon, and the opera by Jacques Offenbach from 1875. Bedford and Cavor discover that the Moon is inhabited by a sophisticated extraterrestrial civilisation of insect-like creatures they call "Selenites". The novel tells the story of a journey to the Moon undertaken by the two protagonists: a businessman narrator, Mr. Wells, originally serialised in The Strand Magazine from November 1900 to June 1901 and published in hardcover in 1901, who called it one of his "fantastic stories". The First Men in the Moon is a scientific romance by the English author H.
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