The First Men in the Moon

Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident. It might have been any one. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myself removed from the slightest possibility of disturbing experiences.

Cavorite sphere → lunar landing → Selenite capture → Bedford's solo escape → epistolary Cavor messages → Grand Lunar audience; bifurcated but coherent, so plot scores 89.

And this book is the sequel. So utterly at variance is destiny with all the little plans of men. I may perhaps mention here that very recently I had come an ugly cropper in certain business enterprises.

Bedford's mercenary practicality vs Cavor's absorbed inventor; Selenites as collective character rather than individuals — moral collision not ensemble warmth, so cast scores 87.

You see, over our Cavorite this ceased to be the case, the air there ceased to exert any pressure, and the air round it and not over the Cavorite was exerting a pressure of fourteen pounds and a half to the square inch upon this suddenly weightless air.

Ch.XXIII–XXIV natural-history lectures slow mid-book; the cavorite breakthrough and launch restore drive after Lympne setup, so pace scores 86.

As I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under the blue sky of southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain quality of astonishment that my participation in these amazing adventures of Mr. Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident.

Bedford's rueful first-person grounds Wells's speculative set-pieces in comic English prose; the vine-leaf frame typifies tactile, self-deprecating narration, so prose scores 91.

Its intelligence and social organisation, in its structure, and more particularly in the fact that it displays, in addition to the two forms, the male and the female form, that almost all other animals possess, a number of other specialisations.

Cavorite anti-gravity, lunar caverns, mooncalves, hive Selenites and Grand Lunar — defining lunar-SF geography with hard-ish physics and social satire, so world scores 95.

I had gone to Lympne because I had imagined it the most uneventful place in the world. "Here, at any rate," said I, "I shall find peace and a chance to work!" And this book is the sequel.

Italian reminiscence frame + Lympne boredom inverted by Cavor's impossible experiments — slower burn than Invisible Man's inn mystery, so hook scores 90.

It formed a sort of atmospheric fountain, a kind of chimney in the atmosphere. And if the Cavorite itself hadn't been loose and so got sucked up the chimney, does it occur to you what would have happened?

Social-satire moon hive + hard-ish cavorite physics; treating anti-gravity as applied problem not wish fulfilment, template for lunar expedition fiction before actual rocketry, so innov scores 95.

The first was: "I was mad to let the Grand Lunar know—" There was an interval of perhaps a minute. Then, as if it were hastily transmitted came: "Cavorite made as follows: take—" There followed one word, a quite unmeaning word as it stands: "uless."

Truncated 'uless' message and Bedford's dream of Cavor dragged into lunar silence — haunting, deliberately incomplete, so ending scores 93.