Life in the Brick Moon

Edward Everett Hale

Library - Science Fiction and Fantasy Science Fiction _bleiler _noisfdb

Published: Feb 4, 1870

Magazine: The Atlantic Monthly, February 1870

Description:

"Life in the Brick Moon" (Atlantic Monthly, February 1870). 
*  The moon seems lost, but then astronomers sight a new asteroid that is approaching— and it is identified as the brick moon, which is in an orbit about five thousand miles above the earth. The telescope also reveals that the new moon is inhabited, for people can be seen walking about, and vegetation— palms and hemlocks— are visible. Communication is established in a grotesque way: The Lunarians designate Morse letters by long and short leaps. 
*  As messages from the moon report: There are thirtyseven people on the brick moon, and they are all very happy. They have plenty of food, both from the stores that had been temporarily placed in the moon and from their crops. Using Darwin's principle they have developed the trees mentioned, also maize, wheat, and rice. They make their own soil. The surface area of the brick moon is larger than one might expect— about three acres— and the unique position of the moon permits multiple crops. 
*  The Lunarians have also developed their own small social system, with schooling, liberal religion, marriages, and eventually new children. They are self-sufficient and contented except for a few things that they cannot produce like toys and clothing. 
*  The first attempts to send such articles up by the flywheels is not successful, and space around the brick moon is littered with rubbish. But later attempts work out. As the story ends, society proceeds normally. 
*  A curious work. The first section is reasonably hard science-fiction for the day, obviously suggested by Jules Verne's A Journey to the Moon, but the second section slips into the mild social satire of the time. 
*  The story is typologically important as the first serious, extended consideration of an artificial satellite, but it does not seem to have had much historical influence. 
*  In The Brick Moon and Other Stories (Little, Brown; Boston, 1899) Hale, in a new preface, states that an enormous telescopic lens used by the Lunarians was made of ice.