Science fiction · Adventure
The First Men in the Moon
A failed businessman and an eccentric scientist fly to the Moon and discover it is far from empty.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
Cavorite
Mr Bedford has failed in business and retreated to a cottage in Kent, where he intends to write a play and make his fortune. Every evening a small man in a cricket cap walks past, humming and buzzing to himself. This is Mr Cavor, a scientist who is close to making a substance that blocks gravity. Bedford sees the commercial possibilities; Cavor sees only the science. Together they build a sphere of glass and steel, fitted with blinds of the new substance, and fly it to the Moon, where they find air, plants that grow as you watch, and a civilization beneath the surface. H. G. Wells published it in 1901, after a run in The Strand Magazine.
Why it works for learners
The heart of the book is a comic partnership. Bedford, practical, greedy and impatient, narrates; Cavor, absent-minded and pure, explains. Their exchanges are clear and funny, and they translate well. The lunar scenes are full of simple, strong sensations: cold, heat, light, hunger, the strangeness of low gravity. The vocabulary moves from money and business to science, space and the workings of a strange society.
Which level to start at
B1 works for the adventure, and B2 brings out the comedy and Wells’s satire of human ambition. The last part, about the Moon’s society, is where the ideas get richest, and where C1 rewards you. Wherever you start, tap a word for its meaning in the sentence and keep reading; Wells’s invented terms are explained as you go.
Read next
- From the Earth to the Moon, Verne’s version, with a giant cannon
- The Time Machine, Wells’s trip to the far future
- A Princess of Mars, another world, another kind of hero