The First Men in the Moon is a scientific romance published in 1901 by the English author H. G. Wells who called it one of his fantastic stories. The novel tells the story of a journey to the moon undertaken by the two protagonists a businessman narrator Mr. Bedford and an eccentric scientist Mr. Cavor. Bedford and Cavor discover that the moon is inhabited by a sophisticated extraterrestrial civilization of insect-like creatures they call Selenites.