The First Men in the Moon
The First Men in the Moon is a scientific romance, originally serialised in The Strand Magazine and The Cosmopolitan from November 1900 to June 1901 and published in hardcover in 1901,[2] by the English author H. G. Wells, who called it one of his "fantastic stories".[3] The novel tells the story of a journey to the Moon undertaken by the two protagonists: a businessman narrator, Mr. Bedford; and an eccentric scientist, Mr. Cavor. Bedford and Cavor discover that the Moon is inhabited by a sophisticated extraterrestrial civilisation of insect-like creatures they call "Selenites". The inspiration seems to come from the famous 1865 book by Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon, and the opera by Jacques Offenbach from 1875. Verne's novel also uses the word "Selenites" to describe inhabitants of the Moon .[4]
For other uses, see The First Men in the Moon (disambiguation).Author
United Kingdom
English
Science fiction
1900[1]
George Newnes (UK)
Bowen-Merrill (US)
Print (hardcover)
342
Influence on C. S. Lewis[edit]
C. S. Lewis explicitly stated that his science fiction books were both inspired by and written as an antithesis to those of H. G. Wells. Specifically, he acknowledged The First Men in The Moon to be "the best of the sort [of science fiction] I have read...." (from a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green).
The influence of Wells's book is especially visible in Out of the Silent Planet, the first book of Lewis's Space Trilogy. There, too, a central role in the story line is played by a partnership between a worldly businessman interested in the material gains from space travel (and specifically, in importing extraterrestrial gold to Earth) and a scientist with wider cosmic theories.
Also in Lewis's book, the two quietly build themselves a spaceship in the seclusion of an English country house, and take off into space without being noticed by the rest of the world. (It may be noted that both Wells and Lewis, like virtually all science fiction writers until the 1950s, grossly underestimated the resources needed for even the smallest jaunt outside Earth's gravitational field.) Like Wells's book, Lewis's reaches its climax with the Earth scientist speaking to the wise ruler of an alien world (in this case Oyarsa, the ruler of Malacandra/Mars) and blurting out the warlike and predatory nature of humanity.
However, in Lewis's book the businessman-scientist pair are the villains of the piece. Moreover, his scientist, Professor Weston, has a philosophy diametrically opposite to Cavor's, being an outspoken proponent of human colonisation of other planets, up to and including extermination of "primitive natives".[12]
Criticism[edit]
Soon after the publication of The First Men in the Moon, Wells was accused by the Irish writer Robert Cromie of having stolen from his novel A Plunge into Space (1890), which used an antigravity device similar to that in Chrysostom Trueman's The History of a Voyage to the Moon (1864).[19] Both novels had certain elements in common, such as a globular spaceship built in secret after inventing a way to overcome Earth's gravity. Wells simply replied: "I have never heard of Mr Cromie nor of the book he attempts to advertise by insinuations of plagiarism on my part."[20]
Jules Verne was publicly hostile to Wells's novel, mainly due to Wells having his characters go to the Moon via a totally fictional creation of an anti-gravitational material rather than the actual use of technology.[21]
