NOVELS.
• IRE FIRST MEN IN Itth MOON.*
Narriuro is more characteristic of Mr. Wells's genius than the manner in which, while frankly admitting his indebted-
ness to some previous writer or thinker, he invents such astounding variations on the same theme as to obliterate all recollection of the original point of contact. Take, for example, his elaboration—in the form of a set of variations sericuses—of the idea of tangible yet transparent invisibility originally developed on purely farcical lines by Mr. W. S. Gilbert in one of the Bab Ballads. A further example of his plan of putting new wine in old bottles is furnished by The First Men in the Moon. The notion has occupied the attention of writers differing as widely in date and temperament as Cyrano de Bergerac and Jules Verne. Yet the gap between the real Cyrano and Jules Verne is not greater than that between Jules Verne and Mr. Wells. The Frenchman's scientific substructure, though neatly built, is of a somewhat flimsy texture. The staple of his narrative is sensational adventure, the colouring is roseate, and the characters genial caricatures of stock types. Now with Mr. Wells, though the attempt to secure scientific verisimilitude is far more elaborate and subtly carried out, the predominant interest is psychological. His aim is not to thrill the schoolboy mind by a succession of cunningly devised sensations, but to illustrate and forecast the effect on the mind, character, and conduct of the personages engaged, of the momentous weapons placed, or possibly to be placed, in our hands by the discoveries of modern science. The choice of the personages themselves, again, is no less characteristic of Mr. Wells's method, for while representing the inventor of the strange substance which renders the trip to the moon possible to be an amiable and disinterested enthusiast, the colleague who accompanies him is a bankrupt company-pro- moter, reduced to play-writing as a last resource, and largely, if not wholly, reconciled to the risks of the undertaking by the prospect of exploiting the mineral wealth of the moon.
Though there is nothing so strikingly ingenious in his new hook as the motive of the Martian invasion of the earth in The War of the Worlds or the cause of the ultimate extinction of the invaders, the manner in which Mr. Wells has founded his romance upon the observed facts and the best accredited hypotheses relating to the moon is extremely skilful and sug- gestive. The great crux that presents itself to Cavor, the good genius of the plot, is to discover a substance " immune " to the law of gravitation. With this he paints the surface of the steel sphere in which the interstellar journey is to be effected, devising a system of shutters by which he can at will subject it to, or withdraw it from, the gravitational " pull " of which- ever of the heavenly bodies it comes within the attraction of. In this way the transit is effected. But the moon is a dead, and therefore an uninhabited, world. This difficulty is got over by representing the Selenites as troglodytes, dwelling in the cavernous recesses of the planet, the less intelligent and menial tribes near the surface, and so advancing in brain- power the lower one penetrates, until in the lowest depths one reaches the court of the Grand Lunar, a monstrous being all brain. The intruders are ef course terribly handicapped at the outset by the difficulty of adapting their powers of loco- motion to the lunar atmosphere, still more by their inability to communicate with the Selenites by whom they are made captive, most of all by the indiscreet conduct of Bedford, the narrator, whose commercial instincts precipitate the Catastrophe. After a sanguinary conflict they escape from • The First Men in the Moen. By H. G. Wells. London rec]
their captors and regain the surface of the moon, but Cavor is recaptured while they are searching for the sphere, and Bedford returns to earth alone. Landing safely near Little- stone with a few specimens of lunar gold, Bedford loses all the pieces justificatives of his journey owing to the curiosity of an inquisitive boy, who in Bedford's absence enters the sphere,. meddles with the machinery, and is shot off into space; but by
way of an epilogue we have a record of the messages received by a Dutch electrician who has contrived to establish communica-
tions it /a Testa with Cavor. These give an account of the. geography and natural history of the moon, and Cavor's- dealings with the Grand Lunar down to the verge of the final catastrophe, when Cavor, indiscreetly revealing to his host that the secret of the means by which any further invasion of the moon by the warlike dwellers in the earth can be realised rests with him alone, signs and seals his death-warrant.
Mr. Wells is generally to be depended upon for a new thrill'. and the latest of his scientific nightmares will not disappoint.
those who crave the stimulant of the unexpected, the uncanny, and the gruesome. Yet we greatly doubt whether The First Men in the Moon will achieve a wide popularity. It is cer- tainly not a book to win the suffrages of the schoolboy reader, for though not lacking in incident, the incident is of a character so uniformly uncomfortable, so destitute of comic or even cheerful relief, as to excite an emotion best described in. the schoolboy phrase of "feeling beastly." Besides, all per- sonal sympathy is absorbed, not by the survivor, with his. sordid, frustrated dreams of material profit, but by the dis- interested inventor, ready to renounce his chance of escape to. earth, compromised by the violence of his companion, in.
order to carry on his blameless exploration of the new world. The moral of this strange story, if moral it has, may perhaps. best be looked for in the last conversation of this ill-assorted pair, while they are still searching for the sphere :—
" We can return,' I said. He looked about him. First of all we shall have to get to earth.'—' We could bring back lamps to carry and climbing irons, and a hundred necessary things?— ' Yes,' he said.—' We can take back an earnest of success in this gold.' He looked at my golden crowbars and said nothing for a space. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring across the crater. At last he sighed and spoke. 'It was I found the way here, but to find a way isn't always to be master of a way. If I take my secret back to earth, what will happen ? I do not see how I can keep my secret for a year, for even a part of a year. Sooner or later it must come out, even if other men rediscover it. And then . . . Governments and powers will struggle to get hither, they will fight against one another, and against these moon people ; it will only spread warfare and multiply the occasions of war. In a little while, in a very little while, if I tell my secret, this planet to its deepest galleries will be strewn with human dead. Other things are doubtful, but that is certain. . . It is not as though man had any use for the moon. What good would. the moon be to men ? Even of their own planet what have they made but a battleground and theatre of infinite folly ? Small as his world is, and short as his time, he has still in his little life down there far more than he can do. No! Science has toiled too long forging weapons for fools to use. It is time she held her hand. Let him find it out for himself again—in a. thousand years' time.'" Enough has been said and quoted to show that Mr. Wells's new book is not so much an irresponsible exercise of the scientific imagination as a grim illustration of the Horatian saying, caelum ipsum petimus stultitiowith the emphasis on. the last word.
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