| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: they do? Well, even if they have had a glimpse of a few stars, or even of
the earth crescent, what of that? Why should people living inside a
planet trouble to observe that sort of thing? Men wouldn't have done it
except for the seasons and sailing; why should the moon people?...
"Well, suppose there are a few philosophers like yourself. They are just
the very Selenites who'll never have heard of our existence. Suppose a
Selenite had I dropped on the earth when you were at Lympne, you'd have
been the last man in the world to hear he had come. You never read a
newspaper! You see the chances against you. Well, it's for these chances
we're sitting here doing nothing while precious time is flying. I tell you
we've got into a fix. We've come unarmed, we've lost our sphere, we've got
The First Men In The Moon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: "I believe that it is Sunday to-day. It is four days now since I
have been conscious. The first sound that I remember hearing was
the blast of a horn. It must come from a factory very near me.
The old windows in my room rattle at the sound. I hear it mornings
and evenings and at noon, on week days. I did not hear it to-day,
so it must be Sunday. It was Monday, the 18th of November, that
I set out on my trip, and reached here in the evening - (here?
I do not know where I am), that is, I set out for Vienna, and I know
that I reached the Northern Railway station there in safety.
"I was cold and felt a little faint - and then he offered me the
tea - and what happened after that? Where am I? The paper that
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: a stillness, came the last message. It is the briefest fragment, the
broken beginnings of two sentences.
The first was: "I was mad to let the Grand Lunar know."
There was an interval of perhaps a minute. One imagines some interruption
from without. A departure from the instrument - a dreadful hesitation
among the looming masses of apparatus in that dim, blue-lit cavern - a
sudden rush back to it, full of a resolve that came too late. 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."
And that is all.
It may be he made a hasty attempt to spell "useless" when his fate was
The First Men In The Moon |
