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The First Men in the Moon (1901) follows Mr. Bedford, a broke would-be playwright, and Mr. Cavor, an eccentric physicist, who build a sphere coated in a gravity-shielding substance of Cavor's invention and ride it to the moon. There they find a hollow world of pale vegetation and herded mooncalves, and beneath it the Selenites — an insect-like civilization of specialized castes presided over by the vast intelligence of the Grand Lunar — in what becomes Wells's most pointed satire of imperial first contact. One of the great early scientific romances, alongside The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds.
This is an immersive reading edition: human narration synchronized with on-screen text, every word highlighted in time with the narrator’s voice.
Source text (Project Gutenberg) and narration (LibriVox) are in the public domain. This LitReads edition — typography, word-by-word synchronization, composition, and original visual design — © 2026 LitReads. All rights reserved.