The First Men in the Moon was published by George Newnes in November 1901, after serialization in The Strand Magazine from December 1900, and represents Wells in his most playful and inventive mode. The novel sends two Englishmen — the bankrupt businessman Bedford and the absent-minded scientist Cavor — to the Moon via a substance called “cavorite” that blocks gravity, and what they find there is not the dead rock of scientific expectation but a thriving, terrifying underground civilization of insect-like beings called Selenites.
The Novel
The central contrast is between Bedford and Cavor: Bedford is practical, violent, and essentially colonial in his instincts (his first response to the Selenites is to fight them); Cavor is a pure scientist, interested only in knowledge, willing to communicate and learn. Bedford escapes back to Earth. Cavor remains, sending radio transmissions that describe Selenite society in detail before going silent — presumably killed when the Grand Lunar, the Selenites’ ruler, realizes the danger posed by the violent species Cavor has described.
The Selenites are Wells’s most fully imagined alien society: a eusocial civilization organized like an ant colony, where individuals are physically shaped from birth for their specific social functions — workers are bred with enormous hands, thinkers with enormous brains, soldiers with massive jaws. It is simultaneously fascinating and horrifying, a vision of total social efficiency achieved through the elimination of individual freedom.
Themes
Colonialism — Bedford’s instinct to fight and conquer the Selenites mirrors British imperial attitudes, and Wells satirizes this instinct ruthlessly. The novel asks: when we encounter the alien, do we try to understand or to dominate?
Science and society — the contrast between Bedford and Cavor is the contrast between the practical man and the intellectual, between commerce and knowledge. Neither is fully adequate.
Utopia and dystopia — Selenite society is perfectly efficient but utterly inhuman. Wells — who would later write extensively about utopian societies — is already exploring whether perfection is desirable.
Collecting The First Men in the Moon
First edition (George Newnes, London, 1901): Blue cloth binding with gilt lettering.
Identification points:
- George Newnes imprint
- “1901” on title page
- Publisher’s advertisements at rear
Market values:
- Fine copies: $3,000–$8,000
- Very good: $1,500–$3,500
- Good: $500–$1,500
First American edition (Bowen-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1901): Published the same year. $1,000–$3,000.
The novel influenced C.S. Lewis (who acknowledged Wells’s Selenites as a model for his own alien societies) and was adapted by Ray Harryhausen in 1964 in a film that remains a beloved classic of stop-motion animation.