The Moon, Science and Politics in the Interwar World: On André Maurois’ The Next Chapter: The War Against the Moon (1927)

This essay focuses on Andrés Maurois’ “fantasy” in The Next Chapter: The War against the Moon (1927) seeking to situate it within the historical and cultural framework of the period. The analysis will focus mainly on the place that Maurois’ text has within the series in which it is included, as well as in the more global framework in which the story takes place and is inspired. Assuming, then, that The War against the Moon is a “precious document upon the present time” (as T.S. Eliot put it in a critical review of the series), this chapter rereads Maurois’ story against the historical, political and cultural context of the post Great War years, paying special attention (1) to the emerging power of popular media and political propaganda at the time (punctuated by names such as Kipling or Wells, with whom Maurois had notable affinities), and (2) highlighting the narrative structure behind Maurois’ “fantasy,” a “fantasy” that questions the present by vividly projecting a future past and which will be widely replicated in similar dystopian works during World War II.