Social commentary and high adventure!Mr Bedford, a recently bankrupt Victorian gentleman has retired to the English countryside to recover his spirit and write a play. He meets Dr Cavor, an eccentric, quaintly comical scientific genius researching the preparation of a compound he calls "Cavorite" that will be opaque to all radiation including gravity. When a laboratory error results in the wildly successful early completion of the Cavorite project, Bedord and Cavor use it to create a sphere that is capable of travel to the moon.
The science in HG Wells' "First Men in the Moon" is now known to be wildly off the mark - anti-gravity; a lunar atmosphere that freezes during the frigid lunar night and sublimates into a rarified but breathable air during the warmer day; an extraordinarily fecund flora that seeds itself, germinates, grows, blooms and completes its life cycle during the brief sunlight hours; and a civilized but strictly class structured lunar insect-like people living under the moon's surface that Bedord and Cavor called "Selenites".
Despite its failings in the light of current scientific knowledge, "First Men in the Moon" is still an enjoyable adventure written in typical late Victorian style that gives us an early taste of 20th century science fiction space opera to follow. Just as he did in his better known novel "The Time Machine", Wells successfully uses his protagonists, Bedord and Cavor, as tools to discuss, satirize and critique deeply and dearly held British notions of class and imperialism.
Suspending your belief and accepting the science in terms of what was known and understood at the turn of the century will allow you to whisk yourself away on a space-faring adventure for an enlightening, enjoyable few hours.
Recommended.
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