Regarded as one of the fathers of science fiction, H.G.Wells wrote The Time
Machine, The War of the Worlds among other works.  He was born 21 September 1866 and died 13 August 1946. He wrote other genres too, including history, politics, and text books.

I remember reading The War of the Worlds in a comic form when I was a kid
and being impressed with it and also because I found an interesting snippet of
information regarding the book – A broadcast by Orson Welles of a dramatization of the novel War of the Worlds in the US on 30 Oct. 1938 caused a furor, many of its millions of listeners taking it for a factual report of the invasion by Martians of New Jersey.

Science fiction written by Jules Verne and H.G.Wells always fascinated me –
I marveled at how they must have visualized what they did in their books and
how they would feel if they could look and have a glimpse into today’s world,
where some of what they wrote as science fiction is reality!

The First Men in the Moon is a scientific romance published in 1901. H. G. Wells called it one of his “fantastic stories”.

Many critics of the time dismissed his writings as writings for children and flights of fancy but the works still remained popular and provided inspiration for a whole new breed of writers later, including George Orwell. His
contemparory, Jules Verne, also criticized him for this book and how he described/used Cavorite.

Book review of First Men in the Moon:

The First Men in the Moon is a science-fiction pioneer book,  – one of the first of its kind. it tells the story of two men, Bedford, a trying-to-be-playwright and Cavor, an eccentric scientist. They become unlikely friends and when Cavor makes a breakthrough in his experiments and succeeds in creating Cavorite – an anti-gravity material – the two men decide to make a sphere – a vehicle out of Cavorite and journey to the moon. Their journey
brings them to a fascinating new world – the moon  as they never expected it to be – full of
strange, fast-growing plants, mooncalves, and moon creatures called Selenites. As they explore the moon and its life, they also discover more about mankind. The book reflects the authors views on war and mankind in general.

• Flibbertigibbet:
  Middle English word referring to a flighty or whimsical person, usually a young woman. In modern use, it is slang for an overly talkative person.Its origin is in a meaningless representation of chattering.
• Besom:
  • 1. a broom, esp one made of a bundle of twigs tied to a handle
  • 2.
    (Team Sports / Curling) Curling a broom or brush used to sweep the ice in front of the stone to make it slide farther
• kop·je (also kop·pie) n. S. AFRICAN a small hill in a generally flat area. from Afrikaans koppie, from Dutch kopje, diminutive of kop ‘head’.
• a·thwart
  prep. 1 from side to side of; across: a long counter thrown athwart the entranceway. 2 in opposition to; counter to: these statistics run sharply athwart conventional presumptions. ■ adv. 1 across from side to side; transversely: one table running athwart was all the room would hold. 2 so as to be perverse or contradictory: our words ran athwart and we ended up at cross purposes. late Middle English