Buying the Moon for $20
Hernán Casciari's story about Dennis Hope, owning the solar system, and what stories are worth.
For the past month, my wife and I have been watching the series For All Mankind on Apple Plus. My colleague (and reader) Ted is right that it does get a little nutty by its third season (at least, as nutty as a show based on the premise that the Soviets beat the Americans to the moon can be). But it’s good viewing for tired weeknights when the kids are asleep and we have an hour of energy to drain before bedtime.
As a little boy in Bayonne, I did not dream of being an astronaut. Even though my dad brought my brother and me a telescope, light pollution from the city erased the stars from view. I only began to appreciate the solar system as I grew older, venturing into the woods with the Boy Scouts or spending weekends at our rancher in the Pocono Mountains. When Mickey, Jeremy, and I backpacked through Scotland as 19-year-olds, I marveled at the expanse of glimmering lights in the sky. In the Highlands, they looked like pebbles on the beach.
The stars can be beautiful on the outskirts of Knox County, where I live today. Sometimes while walking the trash can to the curb or rolling the kids’ bikes into the garage, I look up and marvel. My kids do the same when we drive home after the sun has dipped below the horizon line. “Moon–a, moon–a!” Alba would shout a few years ago whenever she made out the big white ball in the sky.
In June 2021, I wrote about finding wonder in ordinary things. I’ve had conversations about that practice twice this week. First with my therapist about my disappointment at not having won a Pulitzer Prize or had dinner in a European city with a famous person yet. He empathized with me and recommended I seek joy in simpler feats, like a career that allows me to have dinner with my family most nights of the week. Secondly, I spoke with my feature writing students at UT about how they should imitate what Humans of New York creator Brandon Stanton has done so effectively and search for great stories in their own backyards.
But it’s easier for me to prescribe fixes than to take my own advice. For so long, I believed I had no stories worth telling. Like the third servant in the Parable of the Talents, after my big move to Knoxville at 22, I’ve largely stayed put. I rarely take risks, nervous to venture far from my comfort zone for fear of screwing up or disappointing people. A good friend who read my book recently told me he found it sad, particularly the story about going to Scotland with my best friends. My nostalgia is usually seasoned with sadness or longing for a life I haven’t been brave enough to choose.
That’s why I’ve been telling different stories on Substack lately. While they might never feature in Hollywood, stories like my below-zero trek into the woods with Jeremy to face wolves and axe murderers and my ping-pong rivalry with Eddie Finck do make some people laugh.
This week, I’m sharing a translation of a story by Argentine writer Hernán Casciari about stories worth telling. Casciari is a literary icon of mine; he’s achieved a significant reputation in the Spanish-speaking world for bucking back against literary elitism and doing things his own way to great success. These are some of his other stories I’ve translated:
This piece, “Buying the Moon for $20,” was first published on his free blog Orsai in 2006 and adapted for television in 2020. I’ve improvised with the source material for my version.
Note: Since the story’s initial date, inflation has sent the price for a one-acre plot on the moon up to $35. But the gist remains the same.
Enjoy.
Recently a large envelope showed up in my mailbox. Inside, it contained the title for a property I bought myself on the surface of the moon. It cost me $20 bucks, plus shipping. I bought it with PayPal.
The title is printed on a piece of parchment paper with gold trim that reads: Hernán Casciari, owner of 1 acre on the moon. Along with the title, the owner of the moon sent me a satellite photo of my property. The coordinates won’t help you find it, so I’ll just say that if you can picture the moon right now, or if you search Google Images, imagine it has two eyes and a mouth. My acre is just above the right eye in an area called the Lake of Dreams, right beside the Sea of Serenity on the edge of the Posidonius Crater.
The moon’s owner informed me that this was one of the most desirable areas for lunar real estate development and that I’d better hurry up and buy because properties in the Lake of Dreams were selling fast. So, I didn’t hesitate to hand over my credit card info.
The certificate now hangs in a beautiful frame on the wall of my living room. The other day, a group of friends came over, and when they saw it, they laughed at me. They were certain I’d been swindled, but I assured them it wasn’t true. I had Googled to check whether the moon has an owner, and it’s true, it does.
His name is Dennis Hope. Wikipedia says that before he took possession of the moon, he was a ventriloquist. But near the end of the 1980s, he suffered a horrible stretch of luck. Everything that could’ve gone wrong did. He was fired from his job because his boss said he moved his lips too much every time his puppet spoke, and the crowds found him uninspired and boring. On top of that, he’d fallen in love with one of the trapeze artists at the circus he performed in. His wife found out, so she tossed all his stuff on the front lawn. Jobless and on the verge of divorce, he was drunk in his car one night when he looked up at the stars. The moon was full. It was a beautiful sight. Right then, Hope sensed a unique opportunity to turn his fortunes around for good. “I bet you could fit a bunch of houses up there,” he thought.
Until that moment, the idea of taking out a patent on the moon had not occurred to a single human being. And that is the brilliance of Dennis Hope. After sobering up the next day, he looked up the address for the Office of Patent and Trademarks in San Francisco. Once he found the building, he knocked on the door, and when no one answered, he walked straight in and told the first guy he saw, “Good morning, I’m here to claim possession of the moon. What forms do I need to fill out?”
The administrators of the patent office spent the next three hours arguing with Hope, but the ventriloquist had done his research. Before driving to the office that morning, he had stopped by the public library to look up the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which claimed no single nation could ever own the moon or the planets of the solar system. Observing each word closely, he discovered a loophole. “The treaty doesn’t say anything about people!” Hope shouted, hours later, to the director of the patent office, pointing to the copy he had scanned and printed for them.
The director’s secretary had recognized Hope in the middle of the commotion. A year earlier, she had seen him get pelted with tomatoes during a particularly poor performance with his hand puppet. So she pulled her boss aside and said, “What harm can a drunk ventriloquist do by signing a few silly sheets of paper?” It was Friday anyway, and the boss had already missed his lunch break arguing with Hope. So, he handed him a pile of forms. Hope studied each page meticulously. After a while, he filled every bubble, checked every box, and signed his name. He was given a copy, which he then scanned at the library and mailed to the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations, which had drafted the 1967 treaty.
Hope waited years and years for a reply but none came. He figured that was all the proof he needed. He told everyone who’d listen that he was the rightful owner of the moon. But it didn’t revive his career or save his marriage. At first, it didn’t even make him a dollar. Then the internet showed up, and Hope decided to launch a website where he put up tiny plots of land for sale starting at $20. To this day, he’s sold over 600 million acres of land on the moon as well as Mars, Venus, and Mercury. Anyone can buy a piece of the moon, just like I did. There is no barrier to entry.
But not everyone is a fan of Hope’s ambition. Even fewer believe he’s telling the truth about his conquest. They mistake him for a con man and label those of us who buy his properties as dimwits and fools. My own best friend, Chiri, came over for dinner last Sunday. And when he noticed I had hung the title on my wall, he shook his head and said, “How dumb can you be, dude? Don’t you realize you were duped? This man stole $20 from your pocket.” And I told him, “No way!” Because I didn’t just buy myself a piece of the moon. I bought a story. From now on, every time a stranger knocks on the front door, I will invite them inside and show them the certificate Hope sent me, and they’ll nod and listen about how this ex-ventriloquist blah blah blah.
One day, my daughter will bring a boy home for the first time to meet me. What does every father do when a suitor shows up for his daughter? He shows him the stupid things he bought online or at yard sales! I was this boy once, and I had in-laws who showed me stamps, coins, even a dried turd they displayed in a glass case. Now, I’ll get my chance to do the same. I will tell my future son-in-law, “Look, Juan Carlos, this is the plot of land I bought on the moon. One day, you and I will build a fence right here on the Sea of Serenity. And we’ll have a barbecue every Sunday.” That’s why I bought the moon—so that I could have a story.
To me, Dennis Hope is one of the great visionaries of our time. He’s precisely the kind of man I admire: a failure and a liar who waited for his chance to prove his doubters wrong. Now look at him; he’s a millionaire and a genius. I love that he was a ventriloquist and now owns a yacht. I love that the media paints him as a swindler and that there are people who, despite not believing a single word he says, go to his website and buy an acre on his moon for $20.
The world has changed a lot, it seems. Nowadays, everyone can spot a pyramid scheme. The new buyers of fantasy products understand there is nothing beyond the golden trim, the paper with your name in cursive font that promises you a plot of land on the moon. We buy a story. And stories no longer come written in books or broadcast on screens. Stories show up in late-night conversations across the dinner table with friends. They hang on living room walls. Stories are wherever and whatever we want them to be.
The truth is that, despite my purchase and the pride with which I display it, the moon doesn’t matter that much to me. It’s among the things I least care about in the world. But fortunately, $20 doesn’t matter to me either. And if I had the choice to tell a stranger that I own a piece of the moon or $20, I would choose the moon—every single time.
Dennis Hope and I took part in the most perfect imaginary business transaction of my life. I gave him $20, which is a bill that represents a piece of a gold bar sitting in a vault below the U.S. Department of Treasury. In exchange, he gave me another piece of paper representing a plot of land I own on the north side of the moon.
No one has ever seen those gold bars. But my moon, I see her through the window anytime I want.
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I had never heard this story! Found the website. Honestly, I’d be lying if I said I’m not considering buying an acre in the Sea of Tranquility... 🌛