Due Oct 28
Gas Giants and the Discovery of New Planets
Herschel observations yield Uranus, Le Verrier’s calculations yield Neptune. Storytellers imagine travel to the Moon.
In Class: Midterm
The midterm will take place during the first half of class. Details linked at top right.
Astronomy Reading
Openstax Astronomy (pdf | online), Chapter 11.
Arts Assignment
Read “A Visit to the Moon,” by George Griffith, published in the January 1900 issue of Pearson’s Magazine. The story is the second (or perhaps the third) episode from a longer series detailing the adventures of a newlywed couple traveling through the Solar System. I wasn’t able to lay hands on the original magazine, but I took the text from freeread.de, an Australian version of Project Gutenberg. I did correct a few obvious errors in the process, so if you need to cite this source later in the term, I suppose you should credit me, Charles Henebry, as editor and give a link to our course website as your source.
Watch A Trip to the Moon, a pioneering 1902 movie by Georges Méliès. France was a leader in the cinema of the Silent Era, and this film made a powerful impression across the globe for its special effects and production values. Today multiple copies of this 16-minute adventure short have been uploaded to YouTube, differing principally in the audio accompaniment, but I particularly recommend this version: link.
Respond with at least one comment to at least one of the following prompts:
- Discuss the two stories’ scientific accuracy. You can answer by comparing the two, or focus on just one story. Either way, ground your analysis in telling details.
- What sort of person ventures into space? Discuss the theme of human audacity in the two stories. You can answer by comparing the two, or focus on just one story. Either way, ground your analysis in telling details.
- What are aliens like? What cultural clichés stand out in these stories’ depiction of the moon and its inhabitants? You can answer by comparing the two stories, or focus on just one. Either way, ground your analysis in telling details.
The Stories’ Science—Right and Wrong
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“A Trip To The Moon” offers an interesting perspective of how civilization view Moon during their time. However, it is scientifically inaccurate for many reasons. To start, they went to the moon with coats and no helmets. This is simply impossible because they would die without any oxygen. Furthermore they depicted almost a rain-like weather in the moon which is completely false. Additionally, they depicted biomes of plants and mushrooms inhabited by an alien-race which is also inaccurate. Lastly, they illustrated how pushing the rocket would land them straight into the Earth. This would also be impossible due to gravity.
When watching the “A Trip to the Moon”, I noticed a lot of scientific inaccuracies shown. The first one being the fact that the space ship was being shot out of what looked like a canon. Obviously no a days, spaceships and shuttles take off with the engines within. The second inconsistency has to do with the fact that the “astronauts” are not wearing helmets. We know now that there is no air on the moon so all of these scientists would be dead upon, well take off and, arrival. We also know that there are no people on the moon and no secret kingdoms. Lastly, we know that spaceships don’t just fall off the moon and into the ocean. There is a gravitational pull that will stop the spaceship from leaving the moon. We also know that today, astronauts can have more autonomy on where they land. Since the movie characters landed in the ocean, we also know that they would likely be dead if left there too long due to lack of oxygen and other external factors.
Both Griffith’s “A Visit to the Moon” and “A Trip to the Moon” reflect people at the time trying to imagine space travel more, but in very different ways. “A Visit to the Moon” feels a bit more “scientific.” The main character, Lord Redgrave, flies to the Moon in a ship that uses “R. Force” (Repulsive or Antigravitational Force) to escape Earth’s gravity. The story even talks about things like air tanks, helmets, and the lack of air or heat on the Moon. When the characters land, they try to light a match to see if there’s oxygen and notice how hot and cold the surface gets. Those details are not exactly right based on what we know today, but they show that the story is very well-thought-out and relatively science-backed. It is quite astonishing that the author can imagine the scene on the Moon to this extent by only deducing through those mere pieces of evidence at the time.
“A Trip to the Moon”, by contrast, is way less scientifically accurate. It feels more like a fantasy. The explorers are launched from a giant cannon; walk and breathe freely on the Moon’s surface without any protection; and it starts to snow when they are sleeping directly on the Moon’s surface. Probably due to the less-advanced movie technology, the scene looks very theatrical and imaginative rather than realistic. Yet, there’s one detail that potentially show some scientific thought, but from my perspective, it is more of a coincidence: the moment when the explorer see the Earth from the Moon’s horizon (around 8:20), the size of the Earth that the explorer see on the Moon is significantly larger than the size of the Moon that we see on Earth in reality. That scene, actually, is in line with reality due to the larger diameter of the Earth. Thus, while “A Visit to the Moon”‘s author backed the story from what he thought science might eventually make possible, Méliès’ “A Trip to the Moon” is less scientific and more like a fairy tale.
Both “A Visit to the Moon” and “A Trip to the Moon” show excitement surrounding space travel; however, neither is scientifically accurate. Griffith seemingly tries to sound scientific with his character’s worries about oxygen, suits, and the dangers of space. The moon is dry, barren, and airless, which seems closer to real astronomy. Even the vessel is described as being created with technology, not magic. There are some things still based on fiction, like R.Force/antigravitational force that propels the vessel.
Méliès’s film, on the other hand, does not attempt realism at all. The rocket is fired from a cannon, and the travelers breathe on the lunar surface. The moon also has caves, mushrooms, and aliens that explode into smoke. Gravity seems normal there, and the rocket lands on the moon’s surface, treating the moon like a living face, not a planet.
In short, Griffith uses science as decoration for the bigger story, while Méliès relies on fantasy. Both works imagine the moon as a place for adventure, but only Griffith pretends it is a real journey with some outdated scientific backing.
I chose to focus on the Trip to the Moon, the 1902 movie by Georges Melies. The movie was extremely scientifically inaccurate and seemed to be a satire of some sort. The movie starts with what I assumed to be astronoauts discussing their plan to get to the moon, but they are dressed up as wizards. Then in order to get a look at the moon, they use a handheld telescope. Unless they are just extremely technologically advanced, it’s extremely difficult to use a telescope of that kind to get a good view of the moon. They proceed to get into their spaceship without any sort of protective equipment such as helmets, oxygen tanks, or protective suits. Their spaceship is then shot into space like a cannon, this is just physically impossible to shoot a spaceship out of a cannon. It also made me think of how the humans are withstanding such high speeds without any protective equipment, in a spaceship that they just built and didnt run any tests on. They show the moon as if the moons’ texture, craters, highlands seem to be in a formation of an angry human face, though this is possible it just seems very unlikely. Their landing on the moon isn’t smooth at all, they literally land like a cannonball. I was also wondering, that the spaceship had no boosters, no rockets, so I’m curious as to how they maintained their speed. Once they get out of the spaceship, once again they are walking around with absolutely no equipment, and there seems to be no difference in gravity. Both these things just are not possible. Furthermore, their spaceship disappears the moment they all step out, not sure where it went. They sleep on the moon, with a blanket, but again no equipment, no gravity, this just is not possible, they should be floating around, and their bodies should not be able to withstand the temperature changes. The stars and planets also have real human faces on them, thats not possible. It also seems to start snowing/raining on the moon, this is not scientifically possible at all and extremely inaccurate. As they’re going about, they seem to stumble upon a new biome, which is fun of mushroom trees that don’t stop growing, this could be possible if the moon hasn’t been fully explored, but I just don’t see it being realistic. They are then greeted with aliens who capture them and they them to their kingdom, but the astronauts easily escape them and get to their spaceship. Everyone except one get in the spaceship, and the last one is pulling on a rope that is attached to the spaceship trying to descend back to Earth. Once in freewill, he stays hanging onto the rope, this is not possible at all because he would’ve burnt due to the rapid speeds of “falling” down. Their spaceship lands deep in the water and sinks underground, bt somehow floats back up. I don’t understand how such a heavy vessel could easily float back up. Overall, it was an entertaining watch, but its not even close to being scientifically accurate.
Both “A Visit to the Moon” and A Trip to the Moon imagine space travel with the excitement of a new century, but Griffith tries harder to sound scientific. His hero, Lord Redgrave, uses a “repulsive force” machine that cancels gravity—pure fantasy, yet the story surrounds it with technical detail: airtight doors, oxygen tanks, even cold and weightlessness in space. These touches show late-Victorian faith in engineering and natural-law reasoning. A Trip to the Moon, by contrast, abandons science for spectacle. His explorers are shot from a cannon and stroll on the moon without spacesuits. The film’s moon with a human face and its insect-like “Selenites” belong to theater and magic, not physics. What unites them is human audacity: both works treat space travel as a triumph of imagination over constraint.
I think that the difference between Visit to the Moon and A Trip to the Moon is alike to that of medieval explorer’s tale and fantasy stories. In a Visit to the Moon, the tone is that of exploration and fascination. The tone felt similar to how explorers would have talked about the Americas when first explored. On the other hand in A Trip to the Moon, the character’s experience is fantastical. He first crash lands directly into the eye of the Moon (not very scientific plot) and then goes on to fight aliens. While A Trip to the Moon sees the planet as a fantastical other world, Visit to the Moon sees the planet as the basis of a new scientific frontier. The writing in Visit to the Moon is very conscious to explain everything, between the propulsion of the rockets and the idea of biologically adapted species. A Trip to the Moon might be a fun watch but it doesn’t provide the same insight into the scientific speculation that A Visit to the Moon does.
I was struck by how “A Visit to the Moon” treats space travel less like modern science fiction and more like a nineteenth-century adventure story. The science feels like its half believable but is also half magic. Griffith gives detailed descriptions of telescopes and machinery, yet the actual trip to the moon depends on a kind of scientific optimism rather than using physics. Still, that optimism fits the era, because it nicely shows the belief that curiosity could conquer anything. The story’s accuracy isn’t what matters most; it’s the way it captures the excitement of discovery before space travel was even possible.
The film is purely fantastical and does not aspire to be scientifically accurate. Elements such as explorers breathing in the moon without helmets, walking as if gravity was the same as in Earth, or even using regular clothes and umbrellas; are completely theatrical. Furthermore, the moon has a weather, implying there is an atmosphere, as well as mushrooms and even insects, none of which can be real. Not to mention the fact that the moon has a face or the alien life inhabiting it, even how the return home is simply by the capsule falling back to Earth. Overall, I believe Melies objective was not to depict a real landing in the moon, like the one that took place 67 years after, but more of a film with entertainment purposes that depict a fantastical and lyrical moon landing.
What struck me most about “A Trip to the Moon” is how it treats space like it’s just another room. The film completely ignores the concept of a vacuum: the explorers chat, gesture, and breathe freely as if the Moon has a perfectly breathable atmosphere. Even more bizarrely, they experience actual weather patterns when it starts snowing during their nap. This suggests Méliès imagined the Moon as having an Earth-like environment, just in a different location. The mushroom forest growing rapidly adds to this. The film presents the Moon as a living ecosystem rather than the barren, airless rock we know it to be. There’s also the issue of the return journey: their capsule simply tips off the edge of the Moon and falls straight down into Earth’s ocean, as if space operates on cartoon physics where “down” is a universal direction rather than relative to gravitational fields.
The gravity situation is particularly interesting because it’s so inconsistent. The explorers move normally, their equipment works as it would on Earth, and when they strike the alien Selenites, the creatures literally fall downward and disappear. But then there’s that one moment during the Earth-rise scene where the planet appears appropriately large in the sky, which actually aligns with reality since Earth would look much bigger from the Moon than the Moon appears from Earth. It feels almost accidental, though, like Méliès got one detail right while building an otherwise completely fantastical world. Ultimately, the film feels less like speculative science fiction and more like a stage magician’s fever dream, which makes sense given Méliès’ background.
The Stories’ Themes
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The theme of human audacity shows in both the video and the written story when the characters venture into space. In the video, the humans who invaded the aliens’ planet and fought against them are heroically celebrated upon their return. However, it is natural for the aliens to defend their world, so the way the humans were celebrated for their seeming attack shows the audacity that people have in having control over the world. In George Griffith’s “A Visit to the Moon,” only three people, Andrew Murgatroyd and Lord and Lady Redgrave, are involved in the Star-navigator’s crew. The little concern and need for more hands on deck highlights the exceeding confidence in themselves to go into space. In reality, numerous resources, including people, knowledge, materials, and funds, are required for safe, successful launches into space. Additionally, the way they crushed skulls and bones while walking shows the disrespect for the dead civilization that was previously alive there. Therefore, both the video and writing display human audacity in the treatment of aliens and their arrogance in traveling.
I thought it was very interesting how both the movie and story depicted humans. In both, the humans who traveled to space seemed to lack genuine curiosity, and instead an intent to conquer or make space their own. At the beginning of “A Visit to the Moon,” Lady Redgrave says, “‘we are going, perhaps, to solve some of the hidden mysteries of Creation and, maybe, to look upon things that human eyes were never meant to see.”I think it is interesting that she says that they are going to see things they were maybe never supposed to see as humans. To me, this indicates a level of superiority felt by the space travelers in this story; despite the acknowledgment that they are stepping out of line, they still continue in their journey. Further, when they arrive to the moon, they found the remains of aliens, and as they were exploring, “crush[ed] the bones and skulls to powder beneath their feet.” These actions reflect a sense of indifference to extraterrestrial life. To these travelers, there remains are unimportant. They are not invested in the learning behind their journey, but instead the feeling of superiority in accomplishing it.
A similar theme can be seen int he movie. Instead of engaging with the aliens when they found them, and learning more about them, the space travelers were quick to kill the aliens and their ruler. There was no sense of curiosity in their adventure. Instead, they wanted to destroy and conquer the planet.
I want to focus on the second point which discerns what type of person ventures into space. Chiefly, I will examine the 15 minute movie “Le Voyage dans la Lune”. From the very beginning, the movie adopts an absurd tune and it is the most prominent aspect of the film. The men at the beginning of the movie deciding to travel to the moon are strangely in wizard costumes, which to me calls into question the level of seriousness intended by the movie. Space travel is a complex system of precise mathematics, so the idea that lunar travel is made on a whim and fun instantly indicates the human audacity of the scene. The question’s use of “audacity” instead of a more positive connotation word like “innovation” communicates that this silly approach to travel is almost insulting to the truth of the activity. In particular, in my opinion this film asserts humans that travel to the moon as egostistical, pompous and out of touch. Noticably, the people building the rocket are completely different from the people in robes. This could indicate a clothing change, but my interpretation is that the egotistical individuals deciding they want to go to space are not the individuals building the cannon-looking contraption, further indicating a separation from audacity and science. The intricate science is extracted from this movie in its totality, from the silly movements to the jovial trumpeteering music in the background of the film, and this lack of the wizard men building the actual contraption to reach space is another example. The rocket landing in the moon’s eye likely serves a silly entertainment purpose, but it communicates another message in context. This movie is full of the arrogance and audacity of humans to assert their whims over space and other creatures, so the rocket landing in the moons eye and seeming to harm it builds upon the message of human supremacy over the cosmos and foreign creatures, which I think bolsters my point that the film paints space travelers as egotistical and out of touch. The dream on the moon on the moon seems to add to the world building of the movie, yet the movie returns to absurdism and showing the unfounded supremacy the humans feel toward other creatures soon thereafter. When encountering moon aliens, no attempt of connection or science is approached. As the film has indicated all along, the men pompously strike and seemingly kill the alien creature, indicating that the moon exploration is “just because” and to serve man’s selfish curiosity at the expense of other things (like the moon or the moon aliens). After more absurdism and alien killing, the group goes back to the rocket and returns home, hoisting a dead alien like a conquered trophy. In the same way mankind colonized each other in gruesome and unfair ways, this film resembles the same pattern. Exploration for the sake of curiosity with a total lack of regard for existing life or foreign bodies of architecture (or in this case planetary material on the moon) echoes throughout the movie’s runtime. Therefore, I argue that each detail in this movie adds up to a statement about mankind’s audacity to explore and take things as if all objects and places were made to be given to us meaning that those exploring space are selfish, arrogant and entitled.
The astronomers’ wizard robes and their ignorance to science and the life of other creatures to science expose the predisposition for humans to conquer before attempting to understand or explore rationally. So in the movie, the space traveler is not a careful scientist revealing cosmic secrets, but instead is a representation of mankind’s audacity and arrogance.
“A Trip to the Moon” gives some ideas about the audacity of human imagination in the early 20th century. Melies portrays space exploration as unserious colonialization. His group of astronomers literally shoot themselves to the moon using a cannon, turning what’s supposed to be the peak of scientific curiosity at the time into spectacle. The group is then celebrated after fighting off the aliens native to the moon, who are portrayed as barbaric and uncivilized, and killing their leader. This parallels European colonialization of the Americas, where the priority was conquest and domination instead of exploration and scientific discovery. Human audacity in this story is shown in the arrogant, whimsical portrayal of the space explorers and the characterization of the aliens as inferior by default to humans.
The theme of human audacity appears strongly in both A Visit to the Moon by George Griffith and A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès. In both stories, the people who go into space show more pride and confidence than humility or curiosity. Their main goal seems to be proving that human beings can conquer the unknown, even if they do not fully understand it.
In Griffith’s story, Andrew Murgatroyd and Lord and Lady Redgrave confidently travel into space. They view the trip as an opportunity to show off their bravery and intelligence. Lady Redgrave goes so far as to imply that they will see things humans are not meant to see, demonstrating how they perceive the Moon more as something to conquer than as a source of knowledge.When they walk on the surface and find traces of another civilization, they treat the remains casually, stepping over bones and ruins without reflection. Their attitude reflects a sense of superiority and a lack of empathy toward the unknown.
Méliès’s film shows a similar type of arrogance but in a more playful way. The explorers land on the Moon, strike its face, and destroy the Selenites without hesitation. Although the tone is humorous, the act of attacking alien creatures simply for being different mirrors the same human tendency to dominate. Both stories suggest that space travel, at least in these early visions, was less about discovery and more about showing the bold, sometimes careless, nature of human ambition.
I chose to answer the second prompt, as I believe the essence of Griffith’s work is to explore human ambition as much as exploring space. Humans, for a long time, have always attempted to confront and reach new heights, conquering earth at first, and now seeing space as a new frontier, one to be conquered as well. However, Griffith’s attention is less focused on the astronomical science but the nature of humans as bold and curious creatures. In both Griffith and Melies’s work, space exploration is more of a celebration of human audacity (and maybe even greed?) rather than a carefully planned scientific mission.
It is interesting to note from the story the sort of person who ventures space: a highly privileged, elite, and technologically advanced few. They represent the merging of aristocratic capital and science, allowing them to undertake a cosmic journey as a private, romantic enterprise. The theme of human audacity demonstrated here is profound, manifesting in three key ways. Firstly, the foundation of the journey is an example of scientific audacity, success in separating the force of gravitation into its elements of attraction and repulsion and constructing a machine to develop the antigravitational force (“R. Force”). Such audacity to be able to control gravitational force allowed them to undertake a trip of “about two hundred and forty thousand miles” away. Secondly, the travelers display an immense audacity in their intellectual and philosophical goals. They are not just visiting; they are seeking to solve fundamental mysteries of existence, which translates to audacity of purpose. Lastly, the greatest display of human audacity is their refusal to retreat when confronted with the moon’s appalling reality. The scene consisted of hard grey-white and black surfaces, intolerable brightness, or repulsive darkness, and “not a sign of life anywhere”. Despite this horrifying scene, they insist on exploring the deepest, darkest craters of the moon, regions that had “never been seen by human eyes.”
I found the kind of person who ventures into space pictured in two stories is someone with almost aristocratic confidence that contain a mix of boldness, privilege, and curiosity, sometimes crossing into arrogance. In Griffith’s story, Lord Redgrave and Lady Zaidie, plus their engineer Murgatroyd, are willing to blast off with just the three of them, which honestly seems wild. Their willingness to leap into the unknown, trusting their own inventions and skill rather than bringing a bigger crew or extra help, really highlights how sure they are of themselves and their abilities. You can see this in how they casually walk across the lunar surface, crush ancient bones and remains underfoot, treating the moon with sort of colonial assertion of the right to explore and claim new frontiers..
Méliès’s “A Trip to the Moon” shows a similar boldness, but the tone is more humorous and exaggerated for theatrical effect. The space travelers are astronomers who prepare for their journey in comical ways, such as packing themselves into a shell to be shot from a cannon. Their confidence seems almost foolish, pointing to a naive sense of human optimism and pride. Unlike Griffith’s practical engineers, Méliès’s scientists are less skilled but more democratic. They hold public debates and vote on decisions, suggesting that space exploration could be a group effort rather than an elite venture. The film celebrates human courage but also makes fun of it. The scientists battle aliens and return home to triumphant parades, but the whole story mocks the arrogance of scientific and national pride.
The kind of person who ventures into space in A Visit to the Moon is someone driven by courage, curiosity, and refuses to accept limits. Lord Redgrave builds the Astronef, a ship that can escape Earth’s gravity, and he and Zaidie take off into the unknown on their honeymoon. When Zaidie looks out and sees space filled with countless new stars, she feels awe and fear, seeing how small and fragile humans are. On the Moon, they find ruins, bones, and a dead city warning what can happen when a civilization runs out of hope. They do not turn back and rise again toward Mars with determination. Griffith uses these details to show that true explorers are not satisfied with safety and need to see what lies beyond, even if it is unsafe.
The Stories’ Ideas about Aliens
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George Griffith does not envision aliens as a highly developed, technologically advanced species in “A Visit to the Moon.” Rather, he depicts them as the final remnants of a dying world, scarcely alive, blind, and drab. The characters come to the conclusion that these animals are most likely the remnants of a once-intelligent, human-like race. Because it challenges the conventional notion that aliens are superior, that image truly remained with me. In this case, they essentially represent the end of life.
Griffith portrays them as sorrowful rather than threatening due to their large chests, smooth gray skin, and lack of eyes. It’s about deterioration, not monsters. He seems to be cautioning us that when nature turns against us, even the strongest civilizations can collapse. The moon turns into a sort of mirror for Earth, reflecting potential future events.
Compared to something like Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon, where the moon people are more symbolic and amusing, it is a significant contrast. Griffith’s rendition seems gloomier and more depressing; it’s as though he’s using science fiction to get us to consider what happens when advancements run out. His “aliens” are actually reminders that humans are fallible rather than actual aliens.
What are aliens like? What cultural clichés stand out in these stories’ depiction of the moon and its inhabitants? You can answer by comparing the two stories, or focus on just one. Either way, ground your analysis in telling details.
In A Trip to the Moon (1902), the aliens resemble humans but are portrayed as primitive and easily defeated. They use tools and live in an organized society, yet their behavior is shown as chaotic and instinct-driven rather than intelligent. This depiction mirrors how European colonizers in the early 20th century viewed the people they conquered — as less advanced and less civilized.
The film strongly reflects the colonial mindset of its time. France, like other European powers, had a long history of exploration and colonization, and Méliès imagines lunar exploration through that same lens. The explorers “conquer” the moon just as colonial powers conquered foreign lands: they arrive uninvited, impose their will, and kill the moon’s inhabitants instead of trying to communicate with them. After returning to Earth, they even bring home one of the aliens, tied with a rope around its neck, treating it as a trophy rather than a living being. The explorers laugh, celebrate, and dance — showing no empathy or moral concern — while their society gives them medals and erects a massive statue glorifying their mission, depicting them stepping on the moon in triumph.
These final scenes emphasize how the film equates space exploration with conquest. The captured alien and the celebratory monument echo the way colonizers enslaved and exploited people from the lands they overtook. A Trip to the Moon ultimately portrays the Moon as another territory to be dominated, revealing how early science fiction reflected and reinforced Europe’s imperial attitudes rather than challenging them.
In George Griffith’s “A Visit to the Moon” it depicts the possibility of extraterrestial life in a different context of how many would interpret it. Instead of this unkown life being a possibility for many creative and wonderous forms of life that have possibilities which humans could never naturally achieve in their lifetime, Griffith chooses to relate the posibility of life and center it around humanity. He decides to relate the society of the alien’s life to humanity. Griffith writes, “They had conquered the passions and mastered the powers of nature, living by wisdom rather than desire”(Griffith). The aliens are shown to life for the pursuit of wisdom rather than the desire to succeed which has driven humanity for millennia. Griffith also shows with this small line that they had conquered the passions and mastered the powers of nature, meaning that the aliens have taken full resource of their celestial body, unlike how humans have with Earth, and through this, they have no need to desire more, but rather live for wisdom, which is a goal that humanity strives for but cannot achieve due to the constant war within humanity. This show that the aliens have achieved an enlightenment of some sort to which humanity’s version pales in comparison to.
To Griffith the aliens are remnants of a dead civilization: giant skeletons and eyeless, decayed beings that suggest humanity’s own possible future. He does not think of the moon as something mysterious but as more of a warning. The moon lost its life when the air and the water went away.
Méliès’s imagines lunar creatures as comic, almost puppet-like obstacles. The explorers literally blow them up with umbrellas, turning conquest into playful imperial adventure. Méliès’s aliens are not tragic but instead exotic and amusing.
When looking at two works at the same time they show how early science fiction used aliens to mirror human ambition and arrogance, Griffith’s with dread and Méliès’s with humor.
I think that both “A Visit to the Moon” and “A Trip to the Moon” show aliens from a human perspective without using much of science and rational theories. In Griffith’s story, the Moon’s inhabitants live in cities and have social hierarchies, but they are curious and subordinate to the human. For example, the main characters study their behaviors and interact with them almost like anthropologists, emphasizing human superiority. This also mirrors Victorian era of civilization, in which humans are believed to bring knowledge to less advanced societies. In Méliès’s film, when the explorers land, the Selenites (aliens) react in a chaotic manner, only to be defeated by umbrellas and other easy ways. The scene where the explorers are chased by the Selenites and finally leave the Moon highlights a popular media trope that the alien world exists only for human to showcase their heroism and victory traits. It also reminds me of Alien franchise which depicts aliens as evil beings while human have to resist to survive; yet, it’s quite ironic considering the fact that humans often treat the aliens as objects or experiments, showing that the “victim” narrative is more about human heroism than understanding from aliens’ perspectives. Overall, from the movie and reading, the Moon and the aliens themselves serve less as a real scientific concept but more as a tool to project human fantasies about superiority, exploration, and conquest.
The depiction of alines tells us a lot about human imagination and their cultural attitude. In Griffith’s story, the beigns that live on the moon, are described as remaining pieces of a civilization. They are nor described as a powerful race, or even technologically advanced like we usually see in movies. The image of the aline is one of survival and vulnerability and not one of incredible power and advancement. It is very interesting, because from a young age, we have this vision of aliens. They do not look like us, they have a supernatural intelligence since they are already “space traveling”, but this is bad because it makes the children put these imaginary beings over what they can see with their own ideas, like it being real.
On the “A trip to the moon” shows aliens as symbolic or almost comic figures. They move weird and are easily beaten by terrestrial beings. The moon is just like a white canvas where human curiosity can roam free. The alines just highlight the “intelligence” of humans. This description of alines, feels like a video game description. Alines are not smart or powerful, so you are just getting rid of them at will, just as if they were a part of a single player game.
– In George Griffith’s “A Visit to the Moon” (1900), the Moon is not home to a utopian civilization but a desolate “City of the Dead,” filled with ruins and the remnants of a long-extinct race. They encounter the decaying skeletons of enormous beings. This is evidence of a once-great civilization that perished when the Moon lost its air and water. The only remaining “lunarians” are pitiful, ape-like, fish-mouthed creatures clinging to life in deep craters where traces of atmosphere and moisture still linger. Rather than presenting the Moon as mysterious or idealized, Griffith depicts it as a warning about the fragility of life and the inevitability of decline. His vision reflects the era’s anxieties about industrial exhaustion and imperial overreach: even the most advanced civilizations, he suggests, can crumble when nature’s balance is lost.
George Griffith’s short science-fiction story, “A Visit to the Moon” (published in 1900), likely reflects a conventional understanding of science at that time. It also captures many interesting features that reflect the level of scientific and technological development of that era. To solve the problem of space travel, Griffith relies on a magical trope, the “R-force” or Antigravitational Force, to allow humans to travel to space. Written before the first human voyages to the Moon, the author imagines that a magical force that can cancel gravity is necessary for space travel. Today, we have not been able to find antigravitational forces, but are still able to reach the Moon. How? Instead of trying to cancel gravity, we give space vehicles so much force and acceleration that they can overcome the force of Earth’s gravity: gravity isn’t canceled, but surpassed with a greater force. This acceleration points to another problem in Griffith’s story. Their spaceship leisurely goes up, slowly, over time, almost like an ocean-going, passenger ship, but just moving vertically. Using the methods of modern science and technology, we know that a massive amount of force and acceleration is necessary to achieve escape velocity – this isn’t a leisurely cruise up into outer space, but a high G force, quick trip. Griffith’s speed of “a hundred miles per hour” is way too low: today, we know that you need to be able to reach around 25,000 miles per hour to escape the gravity of Earth. Furthermore, a clear error in Griffith’s story is his belief that “as the attraction of the earth became diminished, towards that neutral point some two hundred thousand miles away, at which the attraction of the earth is exactly balanced by the moon”. Because of Newton, we know this is wrong, because the force of gravity is so much greater than the Moon (due to the huge difference in mass); the actual center of gravity of the Earth-Moon system is actually still inside Earth! Griffith reflects the common misunderstanding on the relationship between distance and gravity, thinking that gravity will balance out due to distance, without considering the effect of mass. In terms of science, Griffith’s biggest mistakes revolve around his understanding of gravity, so it’s not surprising that he introduces the magical, antigravity “R-force”.
One aspect that Griffith gets right, however, is the need for automation. Although he doesn’t directly mention robots, the author notes that this voyage is mostly crewed through automation, “by machinery; warming, lighting, cooking, distillation and re-distillation of water, constant and automatic purification of the air, everything … could be done with a minimum of human attention”.
Finally, this story reflects science and technology during the time it was written. In this story, the original inventor died because of the flu, but this scenario is much less likely today, reflecting the tremendous progress in medical science since Griffith’s time. Additionally, they use “telephone wires” to communicate in outer space, but this would be easily replaced with wireless technology that can more conveniently transfer sound waves and voice (The first radio broadcast was made in 1906, just a few years after this story was written). The two adventurers also used helmets covered with asbestos, which would be unthinkable today since we have mostly banned this substance for human use because we now know that it causes cancer.
Both A Visit to the Moon by George Griffith and Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon reflect the turn-of-the-century fascination with the unknown. Their depictions of lunar inhabitants reveal more about human imagination and cultural attitudes than about extraterrestrial life. In both works, the “aliens” are essentially creatures shaped by Earthly biases and assumptions.
In Méliès’s film, the Selenites are portrayed as acrobatic, almost comical beings who explode into smoke when struck. This visual underscores humanity’s dominance and the absurdity of fear toward the “other.” The explorers march across the lunar landscape planting flags and capturing a Selenite king, mirroring colonization rather than scientific discovery. Similarly, Griffith’s lunar beings are depicted through a lens of Victorian curiosity and moral hierarchy. They serve as a reflection of what Europeans imagined “advanced” or “primitive” civilizations might look like. Their image is heavily biased.
In both stories, the moon becomes a mirror for human attitudes rather than a genuine attempt to envision alien life. The aliens embody cultural clichés such as exotic, inferior, or whimsical beings to be studied or subdued. This reveals how early science fiction projected the social hierarchies and imperial ambitions of its era into outer space.
Both “A Visit to the Moon” and A Trip to the Moon show how people at the turn of the 20th century imagined space travel as something daring and fantastical. In A Visit to the Moon, the couple travels with a mix of science and romance, depicting space machinery but the main point is to draw attention to human curiosity and how daring people have to be to explore. In Méliès’s film, the astronomers literally shoot themselves to the Moon in a cannon, which all viewers know is completely realistic and rather comical, but still symbolizes that daring behavior some humans have. Although both stories stray away from scientifically accurate space exploration, they both depict how far people will go to explore the universe and other unknown things.