last updated and validated May 1, 1999. SHD
The lunar race of Selenites is as startlingly different from anything before encountered as the Martians were when humanity first set eyes upon that alien race. These notes aim to provide a general outline of Selenite biology, with pertinent information for the casual reader.
The Selenite form seems to be almost infinitely mutable, and Selenites exist in almost every size and proportion imaginable. The information given here can only be at best a broad guide to the points which most Selenites share in common with each other, although there will always be exceptions.
"For a moment my eyes sought him in the wrong place, and then I perceived him standing facing us both in the full light. Only the human features I had attributed to him were not there at all!
Of course I ought to have expected that, only I didn't. It came to me as an absolute, for a moment an overwhelming shock. It seemed as though it wasn't a face, as though it must needs be a mask, a horror, a deformity, that would presently be disavowed or explained. There was no nose, and the thing had dull bulging eyes at the side - in the silhouette I had supposed they were ears. There were no ears. [...] I have tried to draw one of these heads, but I cannot. There was a mouth, downwardly curved, like a human mouth in a face that stares ferociously. [...] The neck on which the head was poised was jointed in three places, almost like the short joints in the leg of a crab. The joints of the limbs I could not see, because of the puttee-like straps in which they were swathed, and which formed the only clothing the being wore."
In general form the Selenite physiology bears a superficial resemblance to that of humans - two arms, two legs, a head upon which are two eyes, a mouth. However, this is where the similarity ends. In truth the Selenites are closer to insects than to man. Their bodies are generally covered in a chitinous carapace that supports and protects the internal organs. Their hands resemble the end of an elephant's trunk, with two flexible, boneless "digits" used for grasping and manipulating objects.
"This led to a comparison of the lunar and terrestrial eyes. The former is not only excessively sensitive to such light as men can see, but it can also see heat, and every difference in temperature within the moon renders objects visible to it."
The Selenite eyes might be compared to those of terrestrial insects. Rather than the single lens of the larger tellurian animals, the Selenite eye is composed of a great many tiny lenses compounded to allow the Selenite to see quite acutely. It can also perceive light quite far into the infra-red spectrum, allowing it to "see" heat differentials in its surroundings, thus what might be to a human pitch black is clear as day to a Selenite, provided that there is a variation in temperature.
"...Ever and again one of their queer heads came down close to my face, or a soft tentacle-hand touched my head or neck. I don't remember that I was afraid then or repelled by their proximity. I think that our incurable anthropomorphism made us imagine there were human heads inside their masks. The skin [...] was hard and shiny, quite in the beetle-wing fashion, not soft, or moist, or hairy, as a vertebrated animal's would be. Along the crest of the head was a low ridge of whitish spines running from back to front, and a much larger ridge curved on either side over the eyes."
The Selenites differ from the larger animals of Earth in that they have no internal skeleton, but rather have a chitinous carapace protecting and supporting their internal organs. This exoskeleton bears a resemblance to the shell of Earthly insects, and it composed of a similar substance. It has been posited that the greater gravity of Earth has prevented the insectoid form from becoming larger than six inches or so, the size of the largest insects in ancient prehistory. On the Moon, however, there were no such restrictions. One advantage conferred by the Selenites' chitinous armour is that it is, in most cases, flexible and capable of being altered and sculpted into the desired shape. It is this fact more than any other that has led to the vast array of shapes and sizes exhibited in the Selenite population.
"They conversed with one another in their reedy tones, that seemed to me impossible to imitate or define. [...] They faced one another, their queer heads moved, the twittering voices came quick and liquid."
Selenites communicate using a piping, twittering vocalisation similar to that of terrestrial birds. It is not possible for humans to ecaxtly replicate their speech due to the constraints of the human vocal apparatus. It is possible to approcimate it, albeit at a much lower pitch. Much of the information is carried in the rhythm and relative tone of the speech. Consonants are few, and generally used to break up words and separate syllables. Ir is generally easier for Selenites to learn human speech than it is for humans to learn to speak Lunar, but this may be due to the application of some of the Selenites' finest minds to the study of terrestrial language. That being said, the only resource that the Selenites have on Earthly matters is Mr. Cavor, whose English is idiosyncratic at best, as demonstrated by the propensity among English-speaking Selenites to pepper their speech with little phrases that they have picked up from Cavor - "If I may say", and "If you understand" being some of the more common of these.
The study of Selenite language has been aided by the fact that throughout the moon a common language is used. That said, a new system of notation has had to be developed to compensate for the imprecise phonetics of human writing, and the mere twenty-six letters of the Latin alphabet do not provide a sufficient range of articulation to capture the true nature of Selenite speech. The wide vocal range of most Selenites also means that they make excellent mimics, and are capable of reproducing recognisable imitations of voices, even of humans.
It should be noted here that the Selenites have no written language of their own. The ability of the Sekenite race to store data within the vast brains of the Erudite caste has negated the difficulties that faced humanity in passing on knowledge.
Selenite society is divided into two principle castes, which are in turn subdivided into a wide variety of groups each specialised for their determined place in society. The ruling caste is composed of the greatest intellects of the Moon - beings whose entire existence is geared towards intellectual pursuits. The other caste is by far the more numerous, and consists of the hundreds of types of workers required by Selenite society.
"There are administrators, of whom Phi-oo is one, Selenites of considerable initiative and versatility, responsible each for a certain cubic content of the moon's bulk...
"I see them going hither and thither with a retinue of bearers, attendants, shouters, parachute-carriers, and so forth - queer groups to see."
"...about 5 ft. high [with] small slender legs about 18 in. long, and slight feet of the common lunar pattern. On these balanced a little body, throbbing with the pulsations of his heart. He had long, soft, many-jointed arms ending in a tentacled grip, and his neck was many-jointed in the usual way, but exceptionally short and thick. His head [...] "is of the common lunar type, but strangely modified. The mouth has the usual expressionless gape, but it is unusually small and pointing downward, and the mask is reduced to the size of a large flat nose-flap. On either side are the little eyes.
"The rest of the head is distended into a huge globe and the chitinous leathery cuticle of the mooncalf herds thins out to a mere membrane, through which the pulsating brain movements are distinctly visible. He in is a creature, indeed, with a tremendously hypertrophied brain, and with the rest of his organism both relatively and absolutely dwarfed."
"The erudite for the most part are rapt in an impervious and apoplectic complacency, from which only a denial of their erudition can rouse them. Usually they are led about by little watchers and attendants, and often there are small and active-looking creatures, small females usually, that I am inclined to think are a sort of wife to them; but some of the profounder scholars are altogether too great for locomotion, and are carried from place to place in a sort of sedan tub, wabbling jellies of knowledge that enlist my respectful astonishment."
"If, for example, a Selenite is destined to be a mathematician, his teachers and trainers set out at once to that end. They check any incipient disposition to other pursuits, they encourage his mathematical bias with a perfect psychological skill. His brain grows, or at least the mathematical faculties of his brain grow, and the rest of him only so much as is necessary to sustain this essential part of him. At last, save for rest and food, his one delight lies in the exercise and display of his facility, his one interest in its application, his sole society with other specialists in his own line."
"...To rule over these things and order any erring tendency there might be in some aberrant natures are the most muscular beings I have seen in the moon, a sort of lunar police, who must have been trained from their earliest years to give a perfect respect and obedience to the swollen heads."
For the most part Selenites are physically frail, lightly built and with a carapace that is quite thin and serves little more function than to contain the internal organs. However, in some specialised specimens that carapace has, through injections of nutrients, irritants and the like, been thickened and hardened into serviceable armour, and the muscular structure enhanced through regular exercise and medical treatment. Such armoured and muscled Selenites serve to police the tunnels and galleries of the Moon, dealing with those few Selenites with disruptive tendencies. Such specimens could probably match or even outclass the average human for size and strength, and also have the added advantage of an integral suit of plate armour, so only strong crushing blows or bullets can really harm them, as blades tend to glance off.
"...struggling in the grating between those defensive spears appeared the head and shoulders of a singularly lean and angular Selenite, bearing some complicated apparatus. [...] He was aiming in the queerest way with the thing against his stomach. "Chuzz!" The thing wasn't a gun; it went off like cross-bow more, and dropped me in the middle of a leap.
"I didn't fall down, I simply came down a little shorter than I should have done if I hadn't been hit, and from the feel of my shoulder the thing might have tapped me and glanced off. Then my left hand hit against the shaft, and I perceived there was a sort of spear sticking half through my shoulder."
While there were no Selenites specifically assigned to the task of war or fighting prior to the arrival of humans on the Moon, there were a number of classes of Selenite who fulfilled similar roles, and possessed appropriate abilities. One such class was that of the Archers, originally a caste of hunters of the animals that dwell in the less densely populated lunar tunnels. Their angular frames and wide-set eyes are adapted to the pursuit of the swift-footed creatures that they hunt. Their large, flat feet and sturdy legs make them into an extremely stable firing platform.
"My alternative route takes me round by a huge, shadowy cavern, very crowded and clamorous, and here it is I see peering out of the hexagonal openings of a sort of honeycomb wall, or parading a large open space behind, selecting the toys and amulets made to please them by the dainty-tentacled jewellers who work in kennels below, the mothers of the moon world - the queen bees, as it were, of the hive. They are noble-looking beings, fantastically and sometimes quite beautifully adorned, with a proud carriage, and, save for their mouths, almost microscopic heads.
"Of the condition of the moon sexes, marrying and giving in marriage, and of birth and so forth among the Selenites, I have as yet been able to learn very little. [...] I am of opinion that, as with the ants and bees, there is a large majority of the members in this community of the neuter sex. Of course on earth in our cities there are now many who never live that life of parentage which is the natural life of man. Here, as with the ants, this thing has become a normal condition of the race, and the whole of such eplacement as is necessary falls upon this special and by no means numerous class of matrons, the mothers of the moon-world, large and stately beings beautifully fitted to bear the larval Selenite [...] they are absolutely incapable of cherishing the young they bring into the moon; periods of foolish indulgence alternate with moods of aggressive violence, and as soon as possible the little creatures, who are quite soft and flabby and pale coloured, are transferred to the charge of celibate females, women 'workers' as it were, who in some cases possess brains of almost masculine dimensions."
"In one great place [...] a number of boats were fishing. We went alongside one of these and watched the long-armed Selenites winding in a net. They were little, hunchbacked insects, with very strong arms, short, bandy legs, and crinkled face-masks."
"They were short, thick, little beggars, with long arms, strikingly different from the ones we had seen before. [...] Their sturdy little forms - ever so much shorter and thicker than the mooncalf herds - were scattered up the slope in a way that was eloquent of indecision."
"...He seemed a trivial being, a mere ant, scarcely five feet high. He was wearing garments of some leathery substance, so that no portion of his actual body appeared, but of this, of course, we were entirely ignorant. He presented himself, therefore, as a compact, bristling creature, having much of the quality of a complicated insect, with whip-like tentacles and a clanging arm projecting from his shining cylindrical body case. The form of his head was hidden by his enormous many-spiked helmet - we discovered afterwards that he used the spikes for prodding refractory mooncalves - and a pair of goggles of darkened glass, set very much at the side, gave a bird-like quality to the metallic apparatus that covered his face. His arms did not project beyond his body case, and he carried himself upon short legs that, wrapped though they were in warm coverings, seemed to our terrestrial eyes inordinately flimsy. They had very short thighs, very long shanks, and little feet."
The Mooncalf Tenders are the most common variety of Selenite to be found on the Moon's surface, their task being to drive the mooncalves out to pasture each lunar day. They generally wear protective clothing consisting of an insulated suit, helmet, darkened goggles and puttees around the joints. This gear protects them from both the freezing cold of the lunar dawn and evening, and the glaring radiation of the Sun at the height of the day. Their forms are ideally suited to their tasks, their legs adapted to scrambling over the rough terrain of the lunar surface, their eyes, although still sensitive by human standards, are inured to the harsh glare of the Sun, and his body resistant to the extremes of temperature and relatively attenuated air.
"First of all impressions was its enormous size; the girth of its body was some fourscore feet, its length perhaps two hundred. Its sides rose and fell with its laboured breathing. I perceived that its gigantic, flabby body lay along the ground, and that its skin was of a corrugated white, dappling into blackness along the backbone. But of its feet we saw nothing. I think also that we saw then the profile at least of the almost brainless head, with its fat-encumbered neck, its slobbering omnivorous mouth, its little nostrils, and tight shut eyes. (For the mooncalf invariably shuts its eyes in the presence of the sun.) We had a glimpse of a vast red pit as it opened its mouth to bleat and bellow again; we had a breath from the pit, and then the monster heeled over like a ship, dragged forward along the ground, creasing all its leathery skin, rolled again, and so wallowed past us, smashing a path amidst the scrub, and was speedily hidden from our eyes by the dense interlacings beyond."
Among the various foods which go to feed the swarming Lunar population the Mooncalf is very prominent. These gargantuan cattle, the size of a battleship, reside in vast caves beneath the surface during the long lunar night, and are driven up steep ramps to the surface by the Mooncalf Tenders to graze during the day. They gorge themselves upon the lush, fast-growing vegetation throughout the fortnight-long day until dusk falls across the Moon, when they return once more into the sublunar depths. It has been theorised that they were bred by the Selenites from some large burrowing creature, like an enormous worm, until now, immeasurable ages after their domestication, they are the perfect meat source, huge, docile, a single specimen capable of feeding a great many hungry Selenites. Their meat has been described as "loose in texture, and whitish brown in colour - rather like lumps of some cold souffle, and it smelt faintly like mushrooms. [...] It had the same laxness in texture that all organic structures seem to have upon the moon; it tasted rather like a gauffre or a damp meringue".
"And all this time the lunar plants were growing around us, higher and denser and more entangled, every moment thicker and taller, spiked plants, green cactus masses, fungi, fleshy and lichenous things, strangest radiate and sinuous shapes."
"...Figure it to yourself! About us the dream-like jungle, with the silent bayonet leaves darting overhead, and the silent, vivid, sun-splashed lichens under our hands and knees, waving with the vigour of their growth as a carpet waves when the wind gets beneath it. Ever and again one of the bladder fungi, bulging and distending under the sun, loomed upon us. Ever and again some novel shape in vivid colour obtruded. The very cells that built up these plants were as large as my thumb, like beads of coloured glass."
"The caverns and passages are naturally very tortuous. A large proportion of these ways are known only to expert pilots among the fishermen, and not infrequently Selenites are lost for ever in their labyrinths. In their remoter recesses, I am told, strange creatures lurk, some of them terrible and dangerous creatures that all the science of the moon has been unable to exterminate. There is particularly the Rapha, an inextricable mass of clutching tentacles that one hacks to pieces only to multiply; and the Tzee, a darting creature that is never seen, so subtly and suddenly does it slay..."
"In one great place heavy with glistening stalactites a number of boats were fishing. [...] Among their catch was a many-tentaculate, evil-eyed black thing, ferociously active, whose appearance they greeted with shrieks and twitters, and which with quick, nervous movements they hacked to pieces by means of little hatchets. All its dissevered limbs continued to lash and writhe in a vicious manner."
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last updated and validated
May 1, 1999. SHD