My first encounter with H.G. Wells's story, War of the Worlds came at an early
age. I collected Classics
Illustrated comic books and Issue #124 was War of the Worlds. It captured my
attention immediately with its graphic depiction of the awful
Martian war machines. To see what it looked like,
Click Here.
Wells begins War of the Worlds by stating:
"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable."
At the time this was written Germany was unifying and becoming a growing military power. The seeds for World War I were being planted some saw it coming and others saw nothing at all. In many ways the Martians are emblematic of the growing threat that Germany was posing towards Europe and the complacency shown by the people of England; the thought that, if there was a threat, the Germans could be easily beaten, was reflected in the attitudes of the characters in novel towards the Martian threat.
For the time, in which he lived, Herbert George Wells' knowledge of science was excellent. As a young man he had received a scholarship to the Normal School of Science and studied biology under Thomas Henry Huxley. Huxley was one leading scientific thinkers of his day. He wrote Evidence on Man's Place in Nature and founded a dynasty of great scientists and writers, including Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World. Wells would later collaborate with Thomas Huxley's grandson, Julian, on a book entitled, The Science of Life. So what we have here is no mere whim of fantasy, but rather first- class science fiction from a man who was well versed in science.
At the time that the story was written, there was a great deal of interest in Mars. In 1877, when Mars was at the closest point in its orbit to Earth, the Italian astronomer, Giovanni Schlaparelli, claimed to have seen red lines on the planet, which he called 'canali' or canals, and the mystery of the Martian canals began. Other astronomers confirmed his findings. Some scientists, such as Percival Lowell, went so far as to claim that they were irrigation canals built by intelligent beings. So the idea that there were lifeforms on Mars with intelligence had fairly wide acceptance at the time.
But not everyone agreed with these conclusions. E.E. Bernard said he could detect no signs of canals on Mars and in 1903 he set up an experiment showing how the canals that others thought they saw could be merely an optical illusion. In 1965 the space probe, Mariner 4, finally settled the matter: No canals, no seas, no visible signs of civilization, maybe some frozen water at the poles.
But, at the time that Wells wrote his novel, the possibility that there was life on Mars seemed very real and, if we had neighbors, why shouldn't they drop in for a visit? Wells went on to describe the evolution of Mars and also to make comments about our own species that seem very modern.
"we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years."
Not only are the Martians similar to the Germans in Wells' novel; they are in many ways similar to Imperial Briton and the reference to Tasmania shows how little regard the imperialist nations had for those who were not as advanced as they were. Throughout the story Wells emphasizes repeatedly that the main difference between the Martians and human beings is that the Martians are more evolved than the human beings. They have better technology and better weapons. This was the same difference that existed between Briton and the countries that she had conquered. He states repeatedly that in the future we might evolve into something very much like the Martians and one of the great ironies of the story is that, in a way, the human race is fighting what our own worst tendencies might lead us into becoming.
The name of the story's narrator is never revealed. No one ever calls him by name and we know not what his name is. This gives a sort of universality to the tale. It could have happened to anyone, a friend, a neighbor, or you, yourself. He is not a muscle-bound hero but rather an ordinary man. And while the national image of England at that time might be compared in many ways to a modern action film hero, the truth was and is that all nations have more Barney Fifes than John Waynes.
The narrator begins by stating that six years ago the invasion from Mars began. The first sign that something unusual had taken place on Mars was when scientists observed:
"a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth."
It caused not a stir and got only small mention in the newspapers. Wells makes numerous allusions to how it was similar to a bullet being fired from a large gun. Considering that Jules Verne had used the device of drilling a deep hole into the Earth and casting a gun barrel to fire a projectile at the moon in his novel, From Earth to the Moon, in 1865, it seems likely that Wells accepted this as the most likely way to achieve space travel. In fairness, Verne had been remarkably accurate in his predictions. Verne was the first person to calculate the amount of explosive force it would take to leave the Earth's gravitational pull and he didn't miss by much. Apollo 11 contained 3 astronauts; the same number of crew members as in Verne's story. The spacecraft left from Florida, just as Apollo 11 did. The ship splashed down in the ocean not far from where Apollo 11 landed. What is perhaps most amazing is that Verne's predicted cost for the project in 1865 dollars was remarkably close to the actual cost in 1965 dollars. So Wells was on firm ground in following Verne's example.
Wells built the drama nicely, describing the ordinary everyday occurrences going on while impending doom was hurling towards Earth.
"One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been 10,000,000 miles away) I went for a walk with my wife. It was starlight and I explained the Signs of the Zodiac to her, and pointed out Mars, a bright dot of light creeping zenithward, towards which so many telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night. Coming home, a party of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing and playing music."
But then came the night of the falling star, a green streak of light in the sky that gave off a kind of hissing sound. The following morning, the narrator's friend Ogilvy set out find where it had landed.
"somewhere on the common between Horsell, Ottershaw, and Woking"
It is not surprising that Wells should have chosen this location for the first landing of the Martians because he once lived in Woking. Ogilvy discovered a huge smoking pit which contained a half-buried red-hot cylinder about 30 yards in diameter. When the top of the cylinder began to rotate, in the manner of a screw turning, he realized that the cylinder was hollow and something inside was trying to get out. He ran towards Woking and found Henderson, the journalist, and the two men returned to the pit. Henderson then returned to Woking and wired the story to London. When the narrator read the news in the paper he rushed to the pit to see it for himself. A crowd of several hundred watched as the lid of the thing made its final turn and fell off. Most the crowd fled in panic but the narrator remained. Wells' description of the Martian is beautiful.
"A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.
Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air."
Not only is it ugly and very unhuman; Its dripping saliva, a sign that it might be hungry.
Thinking that the creatures surely must be intelligent, Ogilvy, Henderson, and some other men approached the pit with a flag of peace. But intelligence is not necessarily accompanied by benevolence. A green death ray fried the advancing peace party.
"It was sweeping round swiftly and steadily, this flaming death, this invisible, inevitable sword of heat."
Wells anticipated the laser and the Star Wars light saber. Apparently, the Martian Foreign Policy was designed by George Bush and Ronald Reagan. The people near the pit panicked and ran.
"There were shrieks and shouts, and suddenly a mounted policeman came galloping through the confusion with his hands clasped over his head, screaming.
'They're coming!' a woman shrieked, and incontinently everyone was turning and pushing at those behind, in order to clear their way to Woking again. They must have bolted as blindly as a flock of sheep."
Think of the all the times you've heard phrases similar to "They're coming." in horror movies like, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Them , The Beginning of the End, and even Drew Brarrymore's quite little, `They're here', in Poltergeist. I do not know if Wells was the first to use this device but he certainly set a pattern that would be copied over and over again.
The narrator ran home and told his wife of the danger but reassured her that the creatures were "the most sluggish things I ever saw crawl". He was quite certain they could not get out of the pit.
By nightfall soldiers had surrounded the pit. And a second cylinder crashed to Earth just a few miles away.
A great deal of the beauty of Wells' story lies in the way in which he showed that, while imminent danger was laying ahead, the people went about their lives with little concern. The narrator's neighbor commented:
"This lot'll cost the insurance people a pretty penny before everything's settled."
And it all seemed little more than a minor trifle but that evening, as the narrator and his wife were having tea in their home in Maybury Hill, they looked out the window and saw the entire countryside being set ablaze. The narrator quickly rented a cart and he and his wife fled to his cousin's house in the town of Leatherhead. Once his wife was safe and secure with his cousins, he went back to Maybury Hill to return the rented cart.
When he returned he encountered a thing he called,
"A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder."
A newspaper would later describe them as:
"vast spiderlike machines, nearly a hundred feet high, capable of the speed of an express train, and able to shoot out a beam of intense heat."
Just as people on Earth who have trouble getting around use `Little Rascal' scouters to regain mobility, the octopus-like Martians had built machines to make themselves mobile. In 1998 the talented artist, Michael Condron, erected a sculpture of the walking machine in Woking complete with Martian. Its absolutely magnificent. Click Here to take a look at it.
The horse was so frightened by these walking machines that he bolted and the cart overturned on him, breaking his neck. The narrator hid as the horrible machines passed him and then made his way to his house.
He saw a soldier outside, looking for a place to hide, and he invited him in. The man told him of how his unit had been wiped out by the death rays that emanated from the terrible Martian walking machines.
In the morning the two of them made their way towards Weybridge, where there was an army encampment. The people of Weybridge knew they were in for a battle but they had no doubt that they would be victorious. When they actually saw the Martian machines they realized it might not be that easy. The soldiers were able to fire a shell into the control compartment of one them and kill the Martian operating it, leaving the machine to wander aimless until it finally crashed into the tower of Shepperton Church and collapsed. The Martians laid waste to Weybridge, retrieved the body of their dead comrade, and fell back to their original positions.
Each day more cylinders were falling to Earth. The narrator encountered a curate who told him that the Martians were sent by God to destroy the world.The scene then shifts to London, where the narrator's brother was studying medicine. Reports had reached London of the Martian invasion but no one really thought that they would be successful enough to attack London. But the Martians had unleased another weapon, poisonous black smoke that clung to the ground and did not disperse as a normal gas would. It killed every living thing that came near it. After it had done its job the Martians removed it from the area with jets of steam. Soon they were in the streets of London.
Here Wells predicts the invention of poisonous gas. This was a thing that would actually come to be. One of the most dangerous weapons of the upcoming World War I would be mustard gas.
As the Martians attacked London, the most powerful city in the world at that time, it seemed that all order and civilization crumbed in their wake. The government and all its agencies, for all practical purposes, ceased to exist.
During the panic, the narrator's brother passed by a bicycle shop that was being looted and he was able to snatch one of the bikes. When he encountered two women riding in a pony cart; the lovely Miss Elphinstone and her sister-in-law; they were being attacked by some men, but he fought with the men, and eventually they gave up their attack. He continued on with the women in their cart.
Wells gives us vivid descriptions of a city in total panic, with the population fleeing, but not knowing where to run to, crowds crushing the slower refugees, and lost children trying to find their parents.
After facing many dangers, the trio of Londoners made it to the coast and were able to board a steamship. The Martian machines wadded into the water after it. When the machines were into water so deep that the legs of the things could no longer be seen, the ironclad, Thunder Child, which was anchored nearby, attacked them and destroyed two of them. The crowd on the steamer applauded wildly. A short time later they were introduced to a new danger. The Martians had machines that could fly.
In the meantime, the narrator and the curate, who had been hiding in a house, found a place where the black smoke had abated and they made their way through fields that were filled with the dead bodies of horses and men. They saw three people running from one of the Martian machines. This time the machine did not use its heat ray. Instead it picked them up, one by one, and put them in a basket on the back of the machine.
The curate and the narrator made their way to the town of Sheen and took refuge in an abandoned house. At that point, fate played a very cruel trick on them. A Martian cylinder crashed to Earth right next to the house they were in and half buried it with the debris from the explosion. From a hole in the cracked plaster of the house they were able to observe the Martians in this latest pit at close range and what they learned was very unsettling.
"Strange as it may seem to a human being, all the complex apparatus of digestion, which makes up the bulk of our bodies, did not exist in the Martians. They were heads -- merely heads. Entrails they had none. They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures, and injected it into their own veins."
So to make matters even worse, the Martians are vampires. To the narrator it seemed like the best hope for survival was to remain hidden until the Martians were done with their work in the pit and then leave. Sharing his hiding place with the curate was not easy. The man rambled on continually about the hopelessness of the situation and he ate more than his share of their small supply of food.
"he was one of those weak creatures, void of pride, timorous, anaemic, hateful souls, full of shifty cunning, who face neither God nor man, who face not even themselves."
The narrator and the curate began to physically fight over the food. The curate lamented over and over again about how he, as a man of God, had been silent about too many evils and this punishment was just and that now it was time for him to speak out. He threatened to reveal their presence to the Martians if he didn't get a larger share of the food.
When confronted with such madness, the narrator stuck him so hard that he knocked the man out. The noise of the confrontation drew the attention of the Martians and the long probing tentacle of one their machines broke through the plaster in the wall and started to search the house. It quickly found the unconscious body of the curate. The narrator hid in the coal cellar. Soon the probing tentacle entered the coal cellar and even touched his boot but it receded without perceiving that there was another human being present. When the narrator left the coal cellar he found the curate's body gone. Gone too, was all the food. The Martian's hadn't discovered him but he was now left to starve.
For many days the narrator hid, too frightened to even look out of the hole in the plaster. He heard no sounds and thought that perhaps he had gone deaf. Eventually, a dog came sniffing at the hole in the plaster. His first thought was to lure the dog in and kill him and eat it but when he went to the peep hole he saw that the Martians were gone. All that was left was the skeletal bones of the humans that they had eaten, now covered with crows trying to peck off what little meat was left on them.
He climbed from the pit and wondered through Sheen, a town in ruins, totally devoid of humans. He felt that it was very likely that he was the last man left in England and that the Martians were now attacking Paris and Berlin.
The Martians had brought with them, either by design or by accident, the seeds of a red weed and the whole area was now covered with the weeds.
"it was like walking through an avenue of gigantic blood drops"
But the red weed was susceptible to a cankering disease caused by bacteria and it did not thrive in Earth's atmosphere. It soon withered and rotted. Here we have foreshadowing of the story's conclusion. Wells is best remembered as a man adept in science who wrote exciting science fiction but his skill in the art of horror was great. He makes numerous references to the red color of Mars and everything connected with it and likens it to blood and he uses many other literary devices to obtain the maximum horror from each scene in the story. This is not just a futuristic adventure tale; it is a journey into the realm of true terror.
The narrator found a garden and pulled all the onions and carrots that he could carry. He went to a stream and drank.
"I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers, had prayed as heathens mutter charms when I was in extremity; but now I prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face with the darkness of God. Strange night! Strangest in this, that so soon as dawn had come, I, who had talked with God, crept out of the house like a rat leaving its hiding place--a creature scarcely larger, an inferior animal, a thing that for any passing whim of our masters might be hunted and killed. Perhaps they also prayed confidently to God. Surely, if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity--pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion."
He set out to find his wife. When he came to Putney Hill he encountered another human. It was the soldier that he had allowed to hide in his house some days earlier. They began to discuss the situation of the human race. The man told him.
"Aren't you satisfied it is up with humanity? I am. We're down; we're beat."
And to the narrator's horror he went on to talk about what plans the Martians might have for the human race.
"We aren't going to be exterminated. And I don't mean to be caught either, and tamed and fattened and bred like a thundering ox."
Mankind had just been knocked down a peg on the food chain and was now no different from cattle, or hogs, or any other form of livestock that was breed to please some need of the master raising it. He went on to say how the Martians were the new government and the new Gods and how many human beings would actually welcome the change. They'd never stood up the wrong-doing of authority figures before. Why would they do so now? So long as they were fed and housed and cared for, would they really make a fuss about being eaten at a later date? The soldier maintained that much of the human race would gladly give up their right of self-determination in exchange for a life free from having to make difficult decisions and thinking about difficult problems. They were happy in the past to let leaders make whatever decisions they wanted to make with no input from the people. What difference did it make if the leaders were human or inhuman?
As for the soldier; he planned to go underground, into the sewers of London. He planned to take the treasures of the libraries and the British Museum and see to it that the human race did not become mere pets kept by Martians.
"they're intelligent things, and they won't hunt us down if they have all they want, and think we're just harmless vermin."
And then, eventually, the humans would revolt, steal the Martians fighting machines, and destroy these new masters of the human race.
The narrator left the soldier and went through the streets of vanquished London. There he found live lunatics and many dead bodies being scavenged by packs of mongrel dogs. Again Wells brings home the horror of the situation beautifully.
"The windows in the white houses were like the eye sockets of skulls."
Then he heard a strange sound.
"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,"
And, at length he discovered it came from a Martian in a wrecked machine. The body of the Martian was also being scavenged by dogs. He found other dead and dying Martians. Eventually, he came to an area with many wrecked machines. The birds were pecking at the dead Martian bodies. He realized that it was bacteria that had killed them. Unlike human beings, they were not immune to common ordinary bacteria.
As news of the Martians defeat spread throughout the country church bells rang and food and relief soon poured in from countries that the Martians had not yet conquered.
The narrator wandered aimlessly and deliriously for days until he was has taken into a house by people who sought to care for him. Here he learned that Leatherhead had been totally destroyed by the Martians and that everyone there had been killed. After regaining his health and his sanity, the narrator decided that he must go back to his home.
To his great surprise and relief, he found his wife and cousin there waiting for him. While the narrator does go on to say that another more deadly attack from Mars is a possibility, basically the book closes with a happy ending. There is no mention of what happened to the narrator's brother or the lovely, Miss Elphinstone, but we must assume they made out all right.
When World War II came Wells lived through scenes very similar to those he had created in his novel a half century earlier. All through the blitz he lived in his house in Regent's Park with bombs falling all around him.
Besides being a great science fiction and horror story, Wells has also given us a great commentary of the social values of the time in which he lived, many of which are just as applicable today. War of the Worlds captured the public imagination from the moment it was first published. In 1925 Cecil B. DeMille bought the film rights to it but it was not made into a film until many years later.
On Halloween of 1938 Orson Welles presented a radio adaption of War of the Worlds on his Mercury Theater on the Air show on radio station, WABC, which was part of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). The scene of the Martian invasion was changed from England to the USA and the play given as though it was a live newscast of the unfolding events. Although it was announced four times during the broadcast that it was only a radio play thousands of people all across the nation took it be a real invasion. This all occurred as World War II was about to start in Europe and many people thought that it was the Germans invading. Police stations were flooded with people asking for help in getting out of the cities. H.G. Wells did not find any of this amusing. In 1940 he met Orson Welles at a radio station in Texas but by then his ire had subsided and he even helped Orson promote his movie, Citizen Kane
In 1975 the movie, The Night that Panicked America, starring Vic Morrow, Cliff de Young, Michael Constantine, Tom Bosley, Will Geer, John Ritter, and Paul Shenar, told the tale of Orson Welles' broadcast and all the trouble it caused.
In 1953 War of the Worlds finally came to the big screen, starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. Barre Lyndon did the screenplay. It won the Oscar for Best Special Effects and the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation. It is considered one of the best science fiction movies ever made.
From 1988 to 1990 we had the TV series War of the Worlds, starring Jared Martin and Lynda Mason Green.
Now we have the latest adaptation of the story from Steven Spielberg. This movie stars Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning and is breaking box office records right and left.
There is little doubt in my mind that 100 years from now Wells' story of the Martian invasion will continue to terrify people that are not yet born.
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H.G.WELLS LINKS
A site dedicated to promoting and
encouraging an active interest in and appreciation of the life,
work and thought of H.G. Wells.
A good Wells site with some good
links.
View the magnificent works of talented
artist, Michael Condron, who erected a sculpture of the walking
machine in Woking complete with Martian in
1998.
A great site offering news, forums, and
everything you'd ever want to know about War of the
Worlds.
This is a really neat site! They show you
how to make models of the Martian Tripods.
War of the Worlds Cover
Gallery
A complete gallery of the many covers of
the various versions of War of the Worlds.
War of the Worlds: A historical
prospective.
A site that came to be because of the
webmaster's interest in The Radio Broadcast of 1938. It has grown
to be one of best sites on the web.
A great United Kingdom site with lots of
interesting content.
Geoff Taylor's The War of the Worlds
Album Illustrations Gallery
This is one of the most talented artists
around. His pictures bring the story to life with a excitement and
vigor that is amazing.
Does it frustrate you not to ever be able
to talk to the top guy? Well, be frustrated no more. This is the
site of the Supreme Martian Overlord.
Your complete guide to all movies dealing
with Mars sponsored by the San Diego Mars
Society.
