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CalProf -> RE: "War of the Worlds" (11 Jan. 2005 16:38:15 )
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H.G. Wells was prophetic in forseeing aerial warfare, nuclear weapons, mechanized tanks, and other instruments of modern warfare. In War of the Worlds, he also imagined flying craft and robots, although that word wasn't invented for another 20 years. When he wrote war of the Worlds in 1901, he was influenced by the vast explosion at Krakatoa volcano in the Pacific, which killed hundreds of thousands of people and dimmed the world's sunlight for years with atmospheric ash clouds. He also was affected by the unification and militarization of Germany at the time, which was producing a new arms race, which he believed would lead to a great war.
Why did he write about killer Martians, not killer nations? He wanted to capture the public imagination through fantasy. A few years before he wrote, astronomers believed they had observed water channels or canals on Mars, and one claimed he saw a strange light on the planet's surface. Perhaps Wells felt he would reach a much larger audience by having the Earth's people unite against the foreign invader, much as we saw in the 1950s sci-fi films where the world's nations unite to fight UFO invaders and then decide to impose world peace (e.g. Earth versus the Flying Saucers, and The Day the Earth Stood Still).
It's also been suggested that Wells was trying to remind people that how the Martians treated earthlings was not that different from the conquest and genocide occurring under colonial rule. Wells was an interesting character; his father was a professional crick player. Much of Wells' "History of the World" was plagiarized from a woman who had sent the text to a publisher for review, who then asked Wells to assess it. (He liked it so much that he used it!)
I'd forgotten that in the book, the Martians feast upon people. Actually they drain people's blood as a life fluid for the Martians, who are nothing more than giant brains.
The 1950s film omitted the dining on humans, and added a cute woman in place of the original protagonist's male companion. Our local Cal Tech Institute was featured in the film, set in California, which shows the Hollywood sign and Los Angeles City Hall being destroyed.
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