The First Men in the Moon
(Annotated Edition)
Description:... The story has two principal characters: Bedford, a bankrupt fortune hunter, and Cavor, an impractical scientist. They are neighbors in the village of Lympne. Throughout the novel, these two figures are contrasted and compared as the author makes satirical observations about humanity in general and utopian ideas in particular.Cavor has invented a substance called Cavorite that neutralizes the effects of gravity. Bedford's entrepreneurial greed senses an opportunity to make money. Before long, the pair are on their way to the Moon in a Cavorite sphere. The journey is related in a believable manner, with some accurate anticipations of the effects of weightlessness in space. Arriving on the Moon, the travelers find that it is in daylight for half of each Earth month. During this time, the atmosphere that was frozen in the other two weeks is warmed, and fantastic vegetation appears. The inhabitants of the Moon, the Selenites, are insectlike creatures who pasture giant worms, the mooncalves, as their food source.
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