The First Men in the Moon [Hardcover]

H. G. Wells (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2004

Two men left for the moon -- but only one will come back. . . . Cavor, a brilliant scientist, accidentally produces a gravity-defying substance. And what to do with a substance like that? Well, if it's the turn of the twentieth century, when Wells was writing, the only thing to do was build a spaceship and travel to the moon. Cavor just wants to understand the moon, but along on the trip with him is Bedford, a cold and calculating business man who's in it for nothing but money. Instead of insight and gold they encounter the Selenites, a horrifying race of biologically engineered creatures vaguely reminiscent of jumped-up ants, who viciously -- and successfully -- defend their home. . . . "Why do people read science fiction? In hopes of receiving such writing as this -- a ravishingly accurate vision of things unseen; an utterly unexpected yet necessary beauty." -- Ursula K. Le Guin

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Written with astonishing animation and lucidity.” —G. K. Chesterton --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Publisher

This book is in Electronic Paperback Format. If you view this book on any of the computer systems below, it will look like a book. Simple to run, no program to install. Just put the CD in your CDROM drive and start reading. The simple easy to use interface is child tested at pre-school levels.

Windows 3.11, Windows/95, Windows/98, OS/2 and MacIntosh and Linux with Windows Emulation.

Includes Quiet Vision's Dynamic Index. the abilty to build a index for any set of characters or words. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Wildside Press (January 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809596539
• ISBN-13: 978-0809596539
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,670,247 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sci-Fi Classic, May 11, 2009

By 

Leslie Stahl "bookworm" (Northwest AZ United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The First Men in the Moon (Kindle Edition)

The First Men in the Moon It's great to see that one of H.G.'s enduring classics is now handily produced for your Kindle or iPhone. It is a "must read" for all fans of classic sci-fi. It's a quick read so it makes a good travel book. If you haven't read it before, it will seem outdated (or even a little cheesy in some places) by today's standards. However, it is an excellent starter story for younger readers, whereas "War of the Worlds" might be a little scary. A great addition to my "free" collection.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Sci-fi classic, April 25, 2009

By 

Dr. Bojan Tunguz (Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The First Men in the Moon (Kindle Edition)

I decided to try reading this book in order to check out the Kindle reader for iPhone. It made sense since I've always been a big fan of H. G. Wells, and the book was free. In the end I was pleasantly surprised to find that the book is quite good in its own right and makes for an engaging and gripping read. Even though the Moon does not hold the same fascination in our mind as to this day Mars does, and many of the "scientific" ideas presented in the book nowadays seem downright silly, the narrative is still very compelling and makes for a fascinating read. H. G. Wells is very good at developing an action-packed plot, and if we can somehow suspend over hundred years of new knowledge, the events and premises in the novel become very plausible. Another fascinating aspect of Wells' novels is the use of Sci-fi genre as a tool of social and political critique, and the last part of this book has a good dose of it as well. This may not be as good of a book as perhaps "The War of the Worlds" or "The Time Machine" are, but it still entertains and provokes thought after all this time has passed. I would strongly recommend it to all the classic Sci-fi fans out there.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Memorable Adventure with Surprising Underpinnings, January 13, 2004

By 

Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The First Men in the Moon (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)

Born in Victorian England, H.G. Wells had very strong ideas about the advantages and disadvantages of a society built on fixed social classes and endless imperialism--and these ideas would inform virtually everything he wrote over his long and distinguished career. Even in the handful of science fiction novels for which he is chiefly recalled today, Wells would return to these issues again, combining them with then-emerging scientific concepts to remarkably provocative effect.

In some respects THE FIRST MEN ON THE MOON is likely his most accessible novel to modern readers, for it is lighter in tone than such Wells novels as THE TIME MACHINE and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, and it reads like an exceptionally well-written pulp adventure of the era. But the underpinnings are the same: class, conquest, and--as in THE WAR OF THE WORLDS--Darwin's controversial theories on natural selection and evolution.

In this novel Wells relies significantly on fantasy, presenting us with Professor Cavor, an eccentric (and quite comical) scientist determined to create a substance that is "opaque" to gravity, what we would today call an antigravity material. Cavor is interested in the work for the sake of knowledge pure and simple, but bankrupt businessman Bedford realizes the commercial implications and attaches himself to the project--and when the material is perfected the two men create a sphere that launches them to the moon!

If this is clearly the stuff of fantasy (Jules Verne sneered at it), what the two men find on the moon is not, or at least was not considered so at the time. In 1901 little was known about the moon, and many notable scientists thought it might hold life. Upon their arrival, Cavor and Bedford find an atmosphere of sorts, a host of strange plants, and ultimately an insect-like race of beings that reside inside the moon itself, beings who practice forced evolution upon their own kind in order to create a rigid, hive-like social structure.

As the nature of the "Selenite" society reflects Victorian concepts of fixed social classes taken to a logical and unpleasant extreme, so do the two humans reflect opposing points of sociopolitical view. Cavor is clearly an instrument of science, less interested in practicalities than in knowledge for its own sake--a point of view that Wells seems to hold in considerable sympathy. But for all this, Cavor is ineffectual; he must rely on Bedford's smash-and-grab imperialistic temperament to see them through. As in many Wells novels, the resulting clash of ideology is stalemate: both extremes need each other, but they are incapable of building compromise and neither is able to overcome the other to reach an outcome that will be satisfactory to any one concerned.

All of this sounds terribly dry and dusty, but the book itself isn't. THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON is a remarkably lively novel, a fast-paced quick read that will appeal greatly to most readers as it balances its philosphical questions with great chunks of pulse-pounding adventure. And even though we know that Wells was off the mark re lunar atmosphere, flora, and fauna, it is easy to suspend our disbelief to enjoy the ride. Recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer