The First Men in the Moon

H. G. Wells

3 ideas

1. Cavor explains war to Grand Lunar

   Stranded alone on the Moon, the scientist Cavor is brought before the Grand Lunar, the Selenites' enormous-brained ruler, and innocently describes human history: nations, armies, and men killing one another by the thousand for territory and honour. The Grand Lunar concludes that such a species, now able to travel to the Moon, is dangerous, and the Selenites cut off Cavor's radio transmissions to Earth before he can send the cavorite formula home. The episode is a test case for the claim that full disclosure of your culture's norms to a more rational observer can be self-condemning.

2. Selenite caste bred to function

   Selenite society shapes each individual from infancy for a single job: young workers are confined in jars or compressed so that only the organ their role needs grows, and a worker not currently needed is drugged asleep until required. Specialisation is carried from education into the body itself, so everyone fits their role perfectly and no one could do anything else. Wells presents it as a working efficiency and a horror at once: the costs of human division of labour, taken to their biological end.

3. Lunar dawn wakes a dead crater

   Bedford and Cavor land at night in a crater of frozen air and bare rock. At sunrise the snow of frozen atmosphere melts and boils into a thin air, and dormant seeds split and grow into a jungle within hours, living through a single fourteen-day lunar day. It shows a world whose ecology is paced entirely by its orbital rhythm.

Save and mark ideas in the app