The Moon is our closest neighbor in space, and an obvious choice to look toward as a first foothold in space exploration.  Three thousand, four hundred seventy-six kilometers across, approximately 7.35x10²² kg, and the brightest object in the night sky, the Moon has been the subject of interpretation in much of the greatest science-fiction of all time.

MOON AS COMIC STRIP

     George Méliès' A Trip to the Moon began with the launch supervised by a bevy of bathing beauties and crashes into the eye of the Man in the Moon.  Captured by the lunar Selenites, the adventurers scape when they find that, when struck, they disappear in a puff of smoke!

MOON AS EXTENSION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

With ostensibly the same source material as the Melies films, The First Men in the Moon, Mssrs. Cavor and Bedford, land and immediately claim the Moon for her majesty Queen Victoria.  The Selenites could not be reached for comment.

MOON AS GOLD RUSH

     Frau Im Mond's moon, or so Professor Manfeldt and Fritz Lang would have us believe, was a treasure trove of precious gold, just waiting for the first person who wanted to travel a quarter of a million miles and pick it up.  (Word of advice:  leave the American agents at home.)

MOON AS NATIONAL INTEREST

     Destination Moon made the aquisition of the moon a matter of the security of the free world.  If unnamed other forces were to get a foothold on the moon before the West, the Earth would be vulnerable to attack at any time...

MOON AS-- whoops, MISSED

     RocketShip X-M set out with your typical group of adventurous stock characters on an expedition to be the first on the Moon, missed, and wound up on Mars instead!

MOON AS BUS STOP

     Mission Stardust was a lunar mission that picked up some stranded aliens who have telepathically manipulated events to bring the Earthmen to them.  Their race is dying (breeding problems, you see) and the space mission winds up bringing them back to Earth for a cure.

MOON AS DODGE CITY

     It was only a small part of the Moon at issue in Moon Zero-Two-- namely the land claim of one man, the criminals that jump his claim, the man's sister, and the washed-up space captain that becomes her champion to avenge her brother's murder and stop the odd scheme of the bad guys.  It's an outer space Western with saloon fights, shootouts and fontier justice.

MOON AS ABANDONED WAREHOUSE

     Those galactic gangsters the Radar Men From The Moon holed up in their lunar hideout while they set their plan to invade Earth into action. Go get 'em, Commando Cody!

MOON AS GROUP VACATION

     Evidently, astronauts are cheaper by the dozen: Earth sends 12 to the Moon, who run afoul of the natives, get a strict object lesson on interplanetary relations, and return home, fewer but wiser.

MOON AS BOON TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

     The Duchy of Grand Fenwick becomes the Mouse on the Moon when it discovers that its main export, its wine, is a powerful rocket propellant.  The primitive little country even lands its explorers on the Moon just in time to pull the US and Russian astronauts out of the fire...

MOON AS SORORITY HOUSE

     The Catwomen of the Moon need some men to get them off the Moon.  Despite their telepathic powers of influence, they can't stop cat-fighting amongst themselves long enough and the Earthmen manage to escape back to Earth in the nick of time.

MOON AS SORORITY HOUSE (again)

     The significantly-less catty but no less quarrelsome Moon Maids visited by a Missile to the Moon-full of panty-raiding Earthmen see the collapse of their civilization when faced with the undeniable power of men.  

MOON AS HONEYMOON COTTAGE

     Careful, spacemen...set off on a mission to the moon with a pretty lady Colonel and you may wind up married by TV transmission when your ship gets stranded.  Oh, well, that's Project Moonbase.

MOON AS SUBURBAN OUTPOST

     Jerry Lewis and Connie Stevens go Way...Way Out and set up housekeeping in a lunar outpost (their own Project Moonbase), and wind up clashing with the neighbors (Dick Shawn and Anita Ekberg).

MOON AS ALIEN SANDBOX

      Apparently, aliens use the Moon to bury stuff.  Or so we found out in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Apparently, some alien kid left his Monolith buried in the lunar regolith at Clavius.

MOON AS FORTIFICATION

     UFO made the moon a defensive outpost, a protection against alien forces infiltrating Earth.  From the secret SHADO Moonbase, squadrons of interceptors would launch as soon as the purple-wigged ladies detected the approach of any of the spinning invaders.

MOON AS ARK

     SPACE:1999 turned the Moon into Earth's first starship when it was blasted out of orbit September 13, 1999.  The 311 people of Moonbase Alpha were guided by mysterious forces to a greater destiny for themselves and the human race....