Sunday, September 4, 2016

War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells

This is not the first time I have read this book. This might be the third time. I used to listen to the old radio show on cassette, narrated and directed by Orson Welles. The Orson Welles radio broadcast (1938) was so realistic that many people believed it to be real and panicked. I cannot begin to guess how many times I listened to that in my youth, as it was a favorite of mine. Then there is Jeff Wayne's (1978) musical which I probably listened to on cassette at least a hundred times. There was also a TV series very loosely based on The War of the Worlds (1898). I recommend all of them without reservation. I still consider The War of the Worlds to be perhaps the greatest science fiction classic of all time. H. G. Wells (1866-1946) is legendary. There are many other greats in the canon of science fiction, but he is one of the greatest pioneers of the genre along with Jules Verne. No fan of science fiction should miss reading The War of the Worlds. It's available for free at numerous locations, including Gutenberg.org.

The opening lines of the book are brilliant. It's an exceptionally well written introduction to the topic of the book: we are not alone in the solar system. There are intelligences greater than our own. We are an object of scientific curiosity:

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.

We are poor keepers of our planet. But Mars is much poorer than our own, for it cannot sustain life. In those days, however, there was speculation that there might be some form of intelligent life. Certainly there were no robots being sent to scour the rocky terrain of the Martian surface. But there are certainly other planets near to our own, but as seemingly impossible to reach today as Mars may have been to his period in the late 19th century.

For centuries, England, along with several of the other powerful European powers of the day, sent out colonies to other continents hoping to settle and expand the presence of the English empire. Only in the most technologically primitive continents was this a success. The narrator describes a feeling that surely natives of other nations must have felt.

I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an animal among the animals, under the Martian heel. With us it would be as with them, to lurk and watch, to run and hide; the fear and empire of man had passed away.

I find Wells' ability to imagine the feelings of the very animals which are under us quite remarkable, and unique in popular fiction in his day, and still rare today.

Ultimately it is the very small organisms that defeat the Martian invasion. However, at the end of the story, the narrator is confident that the Martians can be defeated as they are vulnerable in the period when they emerge from their cocoon like vessels. Of course, the Martians might be wiser, next time, to land their craft further away from populated areas that they might build their machines without human interference. Though, they would have to come up with a defense against bacteria. 

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