illustrationCaption: "I was progressing in great leaps and bounds". (Bedford and Cavor are caught in a violent windstorm caused by cavorite.) The narrator is a London businessman named Bedford who withdraws to the countryside to write a play, by which he hopes to alleviate his financial problems. Bedford rents a small countryside house in
Lympne, in
Kent, where he wants to work in peace. He is bothered every afternoon, however, at precisely the same time, by a passer-by making odd noises. After two weeks Bedford accosts the man, who proves to be a reclusive physicist named Mr. Cavor. Bedford befriends Cavor when he learns he is developing a new material,
cavorite, which can
negate the force of
gravity. Bedford sees in the commercial production of cavorite a possible source of "wealth enough to work any sort of social revolution we fancied; we might own and order the whole world". When a sheet of cavorite is prematurely processed, it makes the air above it weightless then shoots off into space, causing a violent, destructive windstorm in the local area. Bedford speculates that had the sheet of cavorite remained in place, the entire atmosphere of Earth could have been sucked up like a fountain and stripped from the planet, killing all life. Cavor hits upon the idea of a spherical spaceship made of "steel, lined with glass", and with sliding "windows or blinds" made of cavorite by which it can be steered, and persuades Bedford to help in the construction. Cavor suggests prospecting for valuable minerals on the
Moon. Bedford sees an opportunity for huge wealth in developing a space travel business with cavorite-propelled spheres and liners, along with creating a monopoly on the mineral wealth of other planets. After reluctance with last minute doubts, he agrees to accompany Cavor on his voyage to the
Moon. They pack
oxygen and other supplies. On the way to the Moon, they experience
weightlessness, which Bedford finds "exceedingly restful". Cavor is certain there is no life there. On the surface of the Moon the two men discover a desolate landscape, but as the Sun rises, the thin, frozen
atmosphere vaporises and strange plants begin to grow with extraordinary rapidity. Bedford and Cavor leave the capsule, but in romping about in the much lower gravity get lost in the rapidly growing jungle. They hear for the first time a mysterious booming coming from beneath their feet. They encounter "great beasts", "monsters of mere fatness", that they dub "mooncalves", and five-foot-high "Selenites" tending them. At first they hide and crawl about, but growing hungry partake of some "monstrous coralline growths" of fungus that inebriate them. They wander drunkenly until they encounter a party of six extraterrestrials, who capture them. The insectoid lunar natives (referred to as "Selenites", after
Selene, the Greek moon goddess) are part of a complex and technologically sophisticated society that lives underground, but this is revealed only in radio communications received from Cavor after Bedford's return to Earth. Bedford and Cavor break out of captivity beneath the surface of the Moon and flee, with Bedford killing several Selenites. In their flight they discover that gold is common on the Moon. In their attempt to find their way back to the surface and to their sphere, they come upon some Selenites carving up mooncalves but Bedford fight their way past. Back on the surface, they split up to search for their spaceship. Bedford finds it just as the lunar night creeps in but returns to Earth without Cavor, who injured himself in a fall and was recaptured by the Selenites, as Bedford learns from a hastily scribbled note he left behind. Chapter 20, "Mr. Bedford in Infinite Space", plays no role in the plot but is a remarkable set piece in which the narrator describes experiencing a quasi-mystical "pervading doubt of my own
identity. . . the doubts within me could still argue: 'It is not you that is reading, it is Bedford—but
you are not Bedford, you know. That's just where the mistake comes in.' 'Confound it!' I cried, 'and if I am not Bedford, what
am I? But in that direction no light was forthcoming, though the strangest fancies came drifting into my brain, queer remote suspicions like shadow seem from far away... Do you know I had an idea that really I was something quite outside not only the world, but all worlds, and out of space and time, and that this poor Bedford was just a peephole through which I looked at life..." By good fortune, the narrator lands in the sea off the coast of Britain, near the seaside town of
Littlestone, not far from his point of departure. His fortune is made by some gold he brings back, but he loses the sphere when a curious boy named Tommy Simmons climbs into the unattended sphere and shoots off into space. Bedford writes and publishes his story in
The Strand Magazine and assumes Cavor is dead. However, he is astonished nearly two years later when he learns that "Mr. Julius Wendigee, a Dutch electrician, who has been experimenting with certain apparatus akin to the apparatus used by
Mr. Tesla in America", has picked up fragments of
wireless telegraphy from Cavor sent from inside the Moon. The messages in the form of letter code are often broken up and incomplete but nonetheless relate detailed information. During a period of relative freedom Cavor has taught two Selenites English and learned much about lunar society. Cavor's broadcasts provide details about the structure of the Moon, which has been greatly modified by the Selenites. The round lunar surface features that earthly astronomers interpret as "craters" or as volcanoes are in fact artificial lidded openings that lead to a giant system of artificial shafts and tunnels extending deep below the exterior and that "the whole of the moon's substance for a hundred miles inward, indeed, is a mere sponge of rock" linking natural and artificial galleries and caverns. Cavor finds that the subsurface is lit by streams and cascades of water—"no doubt containing some phosphorescent organism"—that flows down toward the Lunar Central Sea, which lies nearly 200 miles below the exterior surface and which glows "like luminous blue milk that is just on the boil". The Selenites' cities lie above this Central Sea. The atmosphere circulates through the tunnels and caverns, driven by the alternate heating and cooling of the surface and the outer galleries as the Moon goes through phases of day and night. Cavor's account explains that Selenites exist in hundreds of forms, many with a particular exaggerated physical feature suited to a single function, such as an enlarged arm or tentacle, or a highly developed smelling organ. Without a confining rigid bony skull, Selenite brains are able to grow continuously, and intellectual functionaries have greatly enlarged brains but reduced physical bodies. They are aided by special attendants whose only role is to support them and help them move about. A Selenite finds fulfilment in carrying out the specific social function or task for which each has been brought up or modified. Specialisation is the essence of Selenite society: "And so it is with all sorts and conditions of Selenites—each is a perfect unit in a world machine..." Cavor learns that when members of society who perform a particular function are not needed, they are drugged and deposited on the ground in a dormant state in a huge area where giant fungus is grown for food. These superfluous members of society will be revived when it is determined that they are needed again. He reflects that: "To drug the worker one does not want and toss him aside is surely far better than to expel him from his factory to wander starving in the streets". The single supreme ruler of Selenite society is the Grand Lunar. When Cavor finally is taken into his presence in an elaborate ritual, he finds the greatest of the Selenites seated in "a blaze of incandescent blue". The Grand Lunar's massive brain case is "many yards in diameter", with his head and body held up by servants. He interrogates Cavor about life on Earth and remarks: "With knowledge the Selenites grew and changed; mankind stored their knowledge about them and remained brutes—equipped". Unfortunately, Cavor also reveals humanity's propensity for war, causing the lunar leader and those listening to the interview to be "stricken with amazement". Cavor's next-to-last message also indicates that the Grand Lunar questioned him in detail about the creation of cavorite, an anti-gravity substance that the Selenites knew of in theory but considered impossible to make because the Moon lacks
helium, a necessary ingredient. After an ominous delay of some days, Cavor's final broken message is detected "like a cry in the night" according to Bedford, who suspects that Cavor's "disastrous want of vulgar common sense" in revealing the violent, warlike nature of human society had raised alarm among the Selenites, who feared the arrival of more earthmen. The message consisted of the broken beginnings of two sentences: "I was mad to let the Grand Lunar know..." and "Cavorite made as follows: take...", followed by the single meaningless word "uless", perhaps an attempt to spell "useless" as his fate closed in. Bedford concludes: "Whatever it was we shall never, I know, receive another message from the moon" and infers that Cavor has been prevented from further broadcasting to Earth when his transmission is cut off as he is trying to describe how to make cavorite. Bedford later dreams of Cavor "struggling in the grip of these insect Selenites, struggling ever more desperately and hopelessly as they press upon him...", and meeting an unknown fate, forced "into the dark, into that silence that has no end..." == Publication history ==