When
I was a kid I won a comic strip-drawing competition at the library. I did this
vast adaptation of the Doctor Who story, ‘Brain of Morbius’ on A1 sheets of
card. I think the poor librarians were overwhelmed by the idiot-madness of my
vast effort in cross-hatching and the sheer hours of cross-eyed effort that
must have been involved, and so they invented a special category and gave me a
prize – a lovely hardback edition of H G Wells with a bookplate inside. It was
clear that they were trying to get me to read ‘proper’ science fiction, and not
just stick to Doctor Who. A ploy if ever I knew one, but it was a good ploy.
‘The
First Men in the Moon’ wasn’t in that omnibus. ‘The Time Machine’ and ‘War of
the Worlds’ were, and of course, I devoured them and have returned to them
several times over the years and thought about them a lot. Somehow the tale of
Cavor going to the moon has eluded me and now I find that it’s more closely
related to Doctor Who than any other of the Wells stories. I might have
appreciated it even more as that Who-obsessed kid with the Terrance Dicks
fixation.
It’s
the outline of the story that’s most like Doctor Who. The impossible journey to
the hostile planet; the good companions – one rather ordinary, the other madly
scientific – coping with the local and rather alarming conditions. They meet
strange new life forms and attempt to communicate with them. They learn all
kinds of surprising things about the alien beings’ back-story. Someone is
captured, someone gets free. Arduous things are gone through. Our heroes’
clothes get messy and torn. They try to hammer out some outlandish plans for
escaping from this queer underground complex in which they are imprisoned. They
try to reason with their captors. They are taken to a throne room, or a control
room, and here the great leader or the beastly monarch confronts them and tells
them all about a doomsday plan. A clock is set ticking. Will they escape? Will
everything explode? Will the aliens be allowed to hatch their nefarious
schemes?
So
here it was at last – the story that underlies under almost every science
fiction and fantasy story I love. It has everything. Even the scientist hero
being dressed eccentrically as he potters in space in his selfish, demented way
– with his cricketing cap, his slippers and his luminous legs… It’s the
mythological quest into the heart of Hades – but peppered with Edwardian stuff
– their outfits, their language, their slightly dizzy ideas about the universe.
This is what adventures in space – or anywhere – are all about.
And
– even though it’s groaning with plot contrivance – I adore the last chunk of
this novel. When our narrator returns alone to Earth in the sphere, abandoning
Cavor on the moon – we receive the rest of the story through handy Morse code
and hear everything that’s been happening to our favourite professor. It’s a
sweaty old contrivance – but it works, I think – not least because it allows
Wells to end with the most wonderful of Gothic twists… He finishes the novel
with the SF equivalent of the lone scribe writing his memoirs and ending
abruptly with describing the footsteps he can hear behind him, and the hot
breath of his enemy against his neck.
All
the way through you can feel the fun that Wells is having… messing with old
genres, making up new ideas out of old. He is inventing – for goodness’ sake – inventing a whole sub-genre – of the
fusty, sparky professor who inveigles his way into hell and tries to reason with
the gleefully unreasoning Satan before doing his level best to come home again
in time for tea. Possibly my favourite genre of all.
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