Cavor’s sphere

Claude Shepperson

Photomechanical reproduction of a watercolour

H.G. Wells, ‘The First Men in the Moon,’ The Strand 20 (July–December 1900): 701.

Technology to be relied upon: Cavor’s craft is presented as a safe mode of transport, despite the obvious perils of cosmic travel. Shepperson stresses its robust materiality, positioning it in the foreground and highlighting its dynamic diagonals while moving its outline into the reader’s space. The illustration must have been seen by Ray Harryhausen, the ‘special effects’ designer of Nathan Juran’s 1964 film version of Wells’s text. Harryhausen endows Shepperson’s design with cinematic life and shows it, as in the original tale, as a symbol of home and security. [Click on the image to enlarge it and mouse over the text for links.]