Novel: The First Men in the Moon

Overview
H.G. Wells’s The First Men in the Moon follows the combustible partnership of Mr. Bedford, a down-on-his-luck entrepreneur, and Dr. Cavor, an eccentric physicist whose invention of “Cavorite” promises mastery over gravity. Written as Bedford’s memoir, the novel uses their voyage to the Moon to stage a collision between profit-seeking pragmatism and idealistic curiosity, and to imagine an intricate alien society beneath the lunar crust.

The journey
Cavor discovers a way to block gravitational attraction with Cavorite, and constructs a sealed sphere with adjustable shutters to steer by modulating gravity’s pull. Bedford, always alert to financial opportunity, finances and joins the expedition. Their flight through space is at once wondrous and hazardous, culminating in a landing near the Moon’s terminator to avoid extremes of cold and heat. Wells depicts a startlingly dynamic lunar surface: a near airless night and then, with sunrise, a sudden exhalation of vapors, boiling heat, and riotous growth as gigantic fungi erupt from the soil.

Discovery underground
At first the men wander on the surface, nearly overcome by the changing conditions. Soon they encounter the Selenites, insect-like intelligences who have carved out vast subterranean caverns with breathable air, regulated climate, and a sophisticated industrial ecology. Captured and separated, Bedford experiences the Moon’s fauna, most memorably the mooncalves, enormous domesticated herbivores, while Cavor, communicating more patiently, begins to learn the Selenite language. The strangers are borne deeper into a honeycomb world of tunnels, lifts, workshops, and galleries, all organized with unyielding efficiency.

The Selenite order
Cavor’s messages and observations reveal a society ruled by the Grand Lunar and structured by extreme specialization. Selenites are shaped, physically and mentally, from youth for particular functions: miners, mathematicians, child-rearers, artists, each anatomically adapted to the work. War and competition are unknown; purpose and social coordination are absolute. Wells contrasts this rational hive with human muddle and aggression, while quietly noting the costs of such an all-encompassing order: individual freedom is subsumed into function.

Escape and return
When Bedford perceives a chance to flee, his survival instinct takes over. He fights free in a chaotic escape that strands Cavor and propels Bedford back to Earth alone in the sphere. He crashes into the sea off the English coast, dazed, suddenly famous, and still thinking of how to monetize Cavorite, the Moon’s gold, and the adventure’s notoriety. A later mishap sends an unsuspecting bystander into space in the runaway sphere, a grim emblem of Bedford’s careless opportunism.

Voices from the Moon
Remarkably, wireless transmissions from Cavor begin to reach Earth. In calm, increasingly philosophical dispatches, he describes Selenite society in detail and reports audiences with the Grand Lunar. When Cavor speaks candidly of human history’s violence and imperial appetites, the tone darkens. Fearing the implications of contact with such a species, the Selenites confine him; the transmissions falter and cease. Cavor’s fate remains uncertain, his discovery sealed away for the Moon’s protection.

Aftermath and themes
Bedford ends with money troubles and remorse, holding a story that is both triumph and cautionary tale. The novel blends scientific romance with social critique: the lure and peril of technological power, the ethics of exploration, and the mirror an alien civilization holds up to human motives. Wells anticipates spaceflight, radio communication, and the moral ambiguities of contact, leaving readers with a vision of intelligence organized by reason, and a warning about what humanity might do with the keys to the heavens.