[6] The first volume, Na Srebrnym Globie (On the Silver Globe; first book edition: Lwów, 1903) describes, in the form of a diary, the story of a marooned expedition of Earth astronauts who find themselves stranded on the Moon and founded a colony there.

[4] On the Silver Globe is the initial book of the trilogy, setting forth in first-person narrative the odyssey and subsequent tribulations of a disastrously miscalculated expedition to the Moon with four men and one woman.

At the very beginning of the narrative, the project's creator and leader, Irish astronomer O'Tamor, whom the readers of this chronicle never come to know, is dead as a result of the landing impact.

Another member, English physician Tomasz (Thomas) Woodbell, succumbs to his injuries soon thereafter, leaving his fiancée Marta (Martha), a secret substitute for a German participant who backed out at the last minute, with the two remaining men, one of whom is Jan Korecki [yahn koh-RETZ-kee], the Polish narrator.

Rather than being overjoyed at Marek's arrival, the wise Malahuda is instead troubled, as he recognizes the potential for societal turmoil and realizes that the religion may not survive if its central founding prophecy is fulfilled.

Fuelled by a wave of religious fervour, the Selenites storm the Szern stronghold that rules their territory (which Zulawski based on Warsaw Citadel, built in the 19th century to bolster imperial Russian control of occupied Poland).

Marek resists the popular clamour for Awij's execution and instead imprisons him in the Temple's sacred crypt, hoping to return to Earth with him as proof of extraterrestrial life once his travails on the Moon are complete.

The new Head Priest, Sewin, becomes aware of this and decides to tolerate it so that if Marek fails or the public turns against him, there will be a reserve leader ready to take his place.

Ultimately, after undergoing unspeakable psychological torment, Marek wins the battle of wills and temptation with Awij, thus ending the Szerns' evil reign.

Having originally flown away to the Moon in the aftermath of an unhappy love affair, and having undergone another tragic romance with a Selenite woman, Marek is exhausted, both emotionally and psychologically.

Marek is also accused of having made a compact with the Szerns, and he is disavowed by a leading religious order who deny the Selenites' terrestrial origin and believe that they are native to the Moon.

After all the sacrifices of the conflict, his hopes for a new society, based upon noble principles, are shattered by disunion in the ranks of the Selenites and their misplaced mystical faith in his status as the Savior.

Unable to be the hoped-for Messiah in the crestfallen Selenites' ultimate desired destiny of Earth-quest, and failing to bring spiritual salvation, Marek achieves unintended messianic status when, in a fulfillment of Awij's dire predictions, he is sacrificed in a manner echoing the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

The final installment, The Old Earth, opens in the period immediately following Marek's martyrdom, as the various Selenite factions, lacking the unifying locus of the struggle against the Szerns, turn upon each other, initiating a reign of chaos foreboding the end of society.

Seeking refuge, two major subsidiary Selenite characters who provided philosophical commentary upon the events taking place in The Conqueror hide in Marek's still-usable spacecraft.

They are subsequently able to auto-pilot it on its originally intended return voyage towards the now-27th century Earth, where they tour much of the world, finding themselves at the center of mysterious plots and machinations aimed at controlling the fate of humanity.

They are found the next day by a passing Arab trader, who cages them and brings them to Cairo, where he sells them to Mr. Benedictus, a wealthy elderly man who is following a singer, Aza, on her world tour.

Benedictus dresses the two Selenites in children's clothing and puts them on a leash, and takes them to Aza's luxury hotel room to present them to her as a novelty gift.

After the concert (where the audience is much more enamored by Aza's looks and sexual attributes than her musicality), he and the two Selenites fly back to Warsaw - a city in the communist United States of Europe (U.S.E.

has resulted in the establishment of a rigid class hierarchy in which a small managerial elite enjoys great privilege while the general working population is poorly paid and kept down by the repressive machinery of the state.

Thus the trilogy ends with anti-intellectual authoritarian regimes consolidating their hold on power both on Earth (in the United States of Europe) and on the Moon (in the Szern homeland).

They were preserved in spite of this directive, and when the Communist government's power began to decline in the late 1980s, Żuławski was persuaded to edit the existing footage into movie form.