Judging a Book by its Cover - The First Men in the Moon

Judging a Book by its Cover - The First Men in the Moon

Old timey Sci-Fi sure had some great cover art. Granted, this isn't the art from when the story was written by H.G. Wells back in 1901, this is from the 60s when paperback science fiction all looked wild.

Even so, I like this one, and you know what else? It is a pretty great adventure. Let's say you, like Mr. Bedford, meet a guy like Mr Cavor who invents a gravity disrupting metal, makes a sphere out of it that he reckons will zip up into space towards the moon with ease and says to you "The thing now is to go." Do you get in it and go with him?"

I should hope so. Because what might you find inside the seemingly dead world that is our own moon? The answer comes from the rich interior world of Wells himself who, before the dawn of powered flight, gives us a classic tale of exploration beyond our atmosphere. This isn't an imagining of the future either, this was supposed to be a contemporary story and one of the examples of what I like so much about space travel stories written before we knew how we would ever travel to the moon; minds were still free to imagine the first steps and they were all bonkers. What, or who, do they find out there?

It doesn't matter which copy you find, grab that one and dive in. Or rather, float up.