The narrative follows two men — a pragmatic narrator and an eccentric inventor — who develop a novel anti-gravity material and build a spherical craft to reach the Moon. They travel through space, land on a stark lunar landscape, and explore its strange ecosystems, encountering the selenites, a highly organized nonhuman society whose biology and social organization inspire both scientific curiosity and peril. One companion becomes separated and communicates his observations in messages, while the other survives alone, returns to Earth, and records the expedition’s discoveries, natural-history observations, and the account of his partner’s fate.