Greatly Belated Book Reviews: The First Men In The Moon

I'll give you a brief summary first. Then, see if it's what you expect.

Two aliens mysteriously appear to some ranchers, behaving wildly and falling unconscious. The ranchers take them back to the edge of civilization, and someone comes to take them to the capital, where attempts to communicate with them can be made. Unfortunately, one of the aliens then displays massive strength, and seemingly without provocation breaks free and kills several, then freeing the other alien. Both of them flee pursuit, and nearly lose the posse sent after them. They are nearly caught in a workshop, but the vicious alien takes several long, heavy tools and uses them as clubs, slaughtering many. The aliens flee into the wilderness. The savage one disappears, but the other is crippled, and proves to be peaceful, and is taken in by the posse, now lead by several important officials. With great effort, expert linguists learn the alien's language, and he is taken before the king. He reveals that the aliens as a whole are violent, greedy, and very warlike, and that he was responsible for the means by which he and the other arrived and has been contacting others. Horrified, the king has him put to death.

Yes, that's a summary of The First Men in the Moon, by H. G. Wells. Of course, it's from the Selenites' point of view...

Of course, there are other things about TFMitM that make it pretty weird by modern standards. There's the fact that the Moon has air, of course (amusingly, it froze overnight-the Moon's not that cold, you know-it might possibly condense, but it's not likely to freeze); there's also the fact that the Moon is mostly hollow. (The Selenites related that they were shocked to learn that intelligent life could exist on the Earth, as it was not hollow and the people couldn't survive by going underground.) If you're willing to forgive the odder bits of it, though, the Moon's setup is quite ingenious.

The Selenites (also called mooneys, though only when Cavor, who is the human who stays with them, communicates with them-ironically they're never called Selenites to their faces) are basically extremely large ant people. While they are equipped with only four limbs and don't have antennae, the Selenites are arthropods. Like ants, they have specialized castes, and have taken this to a greater extreme, thanks to knowledge of surgery, hormonal therapy (well, drug treatments, but more or less the same thing), binding (when I say this, I'm trying to evoke foot binding, which was a painful and degrading process practiced by the traditional Chinese to make women's feet small-of course, the Selenites did this to whole bodies), and other methods. This means that some Selenites have disproportionately massive arms or heads and the like. This is taken to its greatest extreme with the Grand Lunar (the king mentioned in my summary), who has a head so massive that it has to be cooled by artificial means, and is constantly dripping and cascading with water as a result, and a body and face which are so tiny together that it took Cavor a while to even notice they were there.

The various Selenite castes, except for the administrators, are essentially living tools to perform specialized tasks. A drawing specialist, for instance, is described thusly:

"M'm--M'm--he--if I may say--draw. Eat little--drink little--draw. Love draw. No other thing. Hate all who not draw like him. Angry. Hate all who draw like him better. Hate most people. Hate all who not think all world for to draw. Angry. M'm. All things mean nothing to him--only draw. He like you ... if you understand.... New thing to draw. Ugly--striking. Eh?"

That is, "this fellow draws. He doesn't eat or drink much. He loves to draw, but doesn't love anything else. He hates people who don't draw. He hates people who draw better than he draws. He hates most people. He hates people who think the world isn't there to draw. There is no meaning for him except drawing. He likes you because you're a new thing to draw. You're ugly and stand out. Do you understand?"

This is Wells criticizing the way that Industrial Britain treated its workforce. From his perspective, people were treated like parts of a machine, which isn't pleasant at all.

Of course, I don't buy Wells' perspectives on government, but I would definitely agree with some of his points here.

There's one other thing to mention-Cavorite. This is really the most off-the-wall part of the book, even worse than air on the moon. Cavorite is a metal that is somehow opaque to gravity. Huh?

Granted, our understanding of gravity has been influenced by Einstein's relativity, but it's still pretty crazy. (Even crazier is the fact that helium was involved in its construction.)

Aside: A similar story in some respects from earlier in Wells' body of work is In the Abyss. This story features an explorer, improbable travel physics, and an unknown, mysterious civilization where we didn't think there was one. (Google it. It's not one of the better-known ones, and even Project Gutenberg seems to have neglected it.)

The explorer intends to look for life on the ocean floor. His diving sphere travels so fast, it heats up from friction, and at one point renders him unconscious. Not smart.

The civilization was actually somewhat plausible, if improbable: A group of gilled, vaguely fishlike, vaguely humanoid creatures lived on the ocean floor. They know about us in the vaguest possible way-whenever a ship sinks, they find it. And as a result, they worship humans, because wow, ships falling out of their "sky" is pretty amazing. So when the explorer goes down the second time, they don't let him leave.

I like this little story, because it's atmospheric and creepy. If you can get a hold of it somehow, I'd recommend it.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about the grandaddy of all invasions.

-Signing off.