The First Men in the Moon, H. Wells [latest books to read .TXT] 📗

dystopia We, much influenced by Wells.1926Fritz Lang science fiction film Metropolis.1928The Open Conspiracy. Equal voting rights for men and women.1929HGW begins to broadcast on BBC. Wall Street Crash.1930The Science of Life, co-written with son G. P. Wells and Julian Huxley.1932After Democracy. Aldous Huxley’s dystopia Brave New World, with one target: Wells’s utopian technocracy.1933The Shape of Things of Come. Adolf Hitler elected as Chancellor of Germany.1934HGW interviews both Stalin and F. D. Roosevelt. Publishes Experiment in Autobiography.1935Alexander Korda’s film of The Shape of Things to Come.1938Lecture tour of Australia.1939The Holy Terror. Beginning of Second World War.1940HGW stays in London during the Blitz.1941Last novel, You Can’t Be Too Careful.1942Science and the World Mind.1945Last books: The Mind at the End of Its Tether; The Happy Turning. Allied victory in Europe. (January) liberation of Auschwitz; (April) British and American troops find Bergen-Belsen. (August) atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Election of Labour Government. HGW demonized as scientific technocrat in C. S. Lewis’s novel, That Hideous Strength.1946(13 August) HGW dies in London.1967First publication of H. G. Wells in Love, the annex of his autobiography about his sexual relationships.

The First Men in the Moon

‘Three thousand stadia from the earth to the moon . . . Marvel not, my comrade, if I appear talking to you on super-terrestrial and aerial topics. The long and the short of the matter is that I am running over the order of a Journey I have lately made.’ — Lucian’s Icaromenippus*

Contents

i.Mr Bedford Meets Mr Cavor at Lympneii.The First Making of Cavoriteiii.The Building of the Sphereiv.Inside the Spherev.The Journey to the Moonvi.The Landing on the Moonvii.Sunrise on the Moonviii.A Lunar Morningix.Prospecting Beginsx.Lost Men in the Moonxi.The Mooncalf Pasturesxii.The Selenite’s Facexiii.Mr Cavor Makes Some Suggestionsxiv.Experiments in Intercoursexv.The Giddy Bridgexvi.Points of Viewxvii.The Fight in the Cave of the Moon Butchersxviii.In the Sunlightxix.Mr Bedford Alonexx.Mr Bedford in Infinite Spacexxi.Mr Bedford at Littlestonexxii.The Astonishing Communication of Mr Julius Wendigeexxiii.An Abstract of the Six Messages First Received from Mr Cavorxxiv.The Natural History of the Selenitesxxv.The Grand Lunarxxvi.The Last Message Cavor Sent to the Earth

I

Mr Bedford Meets Mr Cavor at Lympne*

As I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under the blue sky of southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain quality of astonishment that my participation in these amazing adventures of Mr Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident. It might have been any one. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myself removed from the slightest possibility of disturbing experiences. I had gone to Lympne because I had imagined it the most uneventful place in the world. ‘Here, at any rate,’ said I, ‘I shall find peace and a chance to work!’

And this book is the sequel. So utterly at variance is Destiny with all the little plans of men.

I may perhaps mention here that very recently I had come an ugly cropper* in certain business enterprises. Sitting now surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in admitting my extremity. I can admit, even, that to a certain extent my disasters were conceivably of my own making. It may be there are directions in which I have some capacity, but the conduct of business operations is not among these. But in those days I was young, and my youth among other objectionable forms took that of a pride in my capacity for affairs. I am young still in years, but the things that have happened to me have rubbed something of the youth from my mind. Whether they have brought any wisdom to light below it is a more doubtful matter.

It is scarcely necessary to go into the details of the speculations that landed me at Lympne, in Kent. Nowadays even about business transactions there is a strong spice of adventure. I took risks. In these things there is invariably a certain amount of give and take, and it fell to me finally to do the giving. Reluctantly enough. Even when I had got out of everything, one cantankerous creditor saw fit to be malignant. Perhaps you have met that flaming sense of outraged virtue, or perhaps you have only felt it. He ran me hard. It seemed to me, at last, that there was nothing for it but to write a play, unless I wanted to drudge for my living as a clerk. I have a certain imagination, and luxurious tastes, and I meant to make a vigorous fight for it before that fate overtook me. In addition to my belief in my powers as a business man, I had always in those days had an idea that I was equal to writing a very good play. It is not, I believe, a very uncommon persuasion. I knew there is nothing a man can do outside legitimate business transactions that has such opulent possibilities, and very probably that biased my opinion. I had, indeed, got into the habit of regarding this unwritten drama as a convenient little reserve put by for a rainy day. That rainy day had come and I set to work.

I soon discovered that writing a play was a longer business than I had supposed; at first I had reckoned ten days for it, and it was to have a pied-à-terre* while it was in hand that I came to Lympne. I reckoned myself lucky in getting that little bungalow. I got it on a three years’ agreement. I put in a few sticks of furniture, and while the play was in hand I did my own cooking. My cooking would have shocked Mrs Bond.* And yet, you know, it had flavour. I had a coffee-pot, a sauce-pan for eggs, and one for potatoes, and a frying-pan for sausages and bacon — such was the simple apparatus of my comfort. One cannot always be magnificent, but simplicity is always a possible alternative. For the rest I laid in an eighteen-gallon cask of beer on credit, and a trustful baker came each day. It was not, perhaps,