Media
Must read and listen to
Wells, H. G. 1995 (1897). The War of the Worlds. New York: Oxford.
Welles, O. 1938. Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds.” Larchmont, N.Y.: Longines Symphonette Society. (on Archive.org)
Pick one of two below
Lyndon, B. 1953. The War of the Worlds. Hollywood, Calif.: Paramount. (Available on Amazon and iTunes)
Spielberg, S. 2005. War of the Worlds. Universal City, CA: DreamWorks Home Entertainment. (Available on Amazon and iTunes)
Theory and Commentary
Pooley, J., & Socolow, M. J. (2013, October 28). The myth of the war of the worlds panic. Slate.
Additional Materials
Marshall, C. (2016, September 8). Things to Come, the 1936 Sci-Fi Film Written by H.G. Wells, Accurately Predicts the World’s Very Dark Future. Open Culture. (on Archive.org)
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos E05 – Blues for a Red Planet
Go to 3:00 for a reading from War of the Worlds (accompanied by Holst’s “Mars” from The Planets)
Early Illustrations of WotW from Open Culture
By Artist Henrique Alvim Corrêa
Assignments
Essay 1: What is Science Fiction?
Student Essays: What is Science Fiction?
Wikipedia article on Definition of science fiction with chronological history
Reading the beginning of War of the Worlds, I couldn’t help but think of Freud’s notion that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution dealt humanity’s ego a blow it would be difficult to recover from. In what ways do you see War of the Worlds as an attempt to grapple with the existential insecurity ushered in by Darwin’s theory?
Interestingly, in the article on H.G. Well’s “Things to Come,” a critic refers to Wells as an “eminent fortune teller.” As a writer of science fiction, this seems to be at odds with Ursula K. Le Guin’s concept of what a science fiction writer is and does. With this in mind, do you think description and prediction are fundamentally incompatible?
Near the end of the Slate article “The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic,” a Northwestern professor maintains that the panic myth has more to do with our collective fear of being manipulated by the media than it does with our actual fear of space invaders. While this may be a fair point, what does this easy dismissal of the possibility of aliens say about humankind?
In the opening chapter of War of the Worlds, H.G.Wells goes to great lengths to remind the reader that man is vein, and to instill in our minds that the Martians were not unlike humans in their quest for domination. He writes: “And before we judge of them too harshly 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. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?” I would ask the same question, basically. Would we be surprised if another species wanted to invade our planet and wipe us out?
In the book, the initial landing sight and the start of the war begins around Woking and Horsell Common, which was an area near H.G. Wells’ home. In the radio play, however, the initial Martian sighting and activity takes place in New Jersey. Since I was born and raised in New Jersey (and live there to this day) I am curious why they chose this particular location.
While listening to the 1938 radio play of War of the Worlds, I noticed that there was not one single female voice actor or any female characters. Why is this?
(chapter 13) The conversation between the protagonist and the curate–what is the author trying to imply or use the curate’s perspective to point out? By asking questions from a “religious” aspect, by having God as the exterior, indifferent, and mighty existence, what does the author want us to reflect on/ draw parallel with? Why having something to invade Earth and kill human beings–“Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done?” Essentially, –“What are we?”
(chapter 14) The response in London and the reports in the newspaper–By showing how badly and distorted the news (the truth at the frontline) are reported to the Londoners, what is the author trying to refer to (or criticize), in the reality of his time?
From the beginning of contact with the Martians, human beings never really regarded them as a proper enemy, whose force is much stronger than that of human. People seem to naturally believe that they are an inferior creature, less intelligent, unable to cause any severe disasters or be a real threat to us. If the Martians are just a metaphor for the work, what does the writer want us to contemplate on? Besides imaginative, fictive creatures, in reality what have we looked down upon? Why do we tend to think that “the alien, unknown others” are inferior, like the British in the book?
In my copy of “War of the Worlds,” the introduction mentions there being a difference between science fiction and science fantasy. What is that difference? Why is there an established binary? In the novel, why do the civilians expect to see a fellow human emerge from the wreckage?
After reviewing the article regarding the popularized myth and tuning into the radio broadcast, I wondered: how does mass hysteria become myth?
Following Wells’ novel, both the radio broadcast and the 1953 film invent fictionalized experts. Why not use the actual names of scientists? Would this discredit them?
One thing that really grasped my attention in each of the iterations of War of the Worlds was how it played into the audience’s fear. The original novel played on people’s panic over technology and the turn of the century, while the radio broadcast played into people’s fears of building global tensions. The 1953 movie version plays on its audience’s fear of nuclear war and the atom bomb, while the 2005 post-9/11 version deals with the fear of terrorism and people’s resilience in the time of crisis. Dakota Fanning’s character even has a line when they first get in the mini van where she says, “Is that the terrorists?” The differences in all the adaptations illustrate the universality and timeliness of the story. If the book was adapted again, how would you like to see it adapted? What would the extraterrestrials represent in the new version?
In the middle of an alien invasion, the most unrealistic moment is the novel’s somewhat fortuitous ending. Does the protagonist finding his wife alive (or the movie version’s protagonists finding their respective people alive) cheapen the story for you in some way? Or is this the hope that the reader/viewer needs in the moment? Can ‘good’ sci-fi have a dismal ending?
After reading, listening, and viewing three (or four) different versions of the story, which was the most effective for you? Why? Personally, I was a fan of the 1953 film version because I love cheesy B-movies from that era. However, I found myself more taken with the tension of Wells’s novel than with the other adaptations.
1. In the Slate article, the authors argue that the panic myth surrounding the Orson Welles War of the Worlds has to do less with our fears of alien invasion and more to do with our fears of “the media’s power over our lives…it’s ABC, CBS, and NBC invading and colonizing our consciousness that truly frightens us.” While this argument is relevant to the panic, or lack thereof, of the 1938 broadcast, how can fear of media (or mass communication) “colonizing our consciousness” be seen in other adaptations of the work? (I’m thinking how Pal’s version coincided with the emergence of television, and how Spielberg’s came less than a year after Facebook was founded.) Is that fear of media/mass communication seen, even, in H.G. Wells’ original novel, and if so, where and how? (I found it particularly striking how early reports of the Martian invasion in Wells’ novel are misreported thanks to flaws in reporting/communication.)
2. As a follow up to question 2, what do you make of the recurring motif that human mistakes exacerbate the tragedy and toll of the invasion in each of the adaptations? It seems like this is also a theme in WOTW “adaptations” that are more homages than outright adaptations (see: Independence Day). Is this exacerbation a hallmark of science fiction focusing on some kind of invasion or takeover generally?
3. In the early sections of Wells’ novel as well as the 1938 broadcast and the two films, time is devoted in the early sections to slices or glimpses of mundane life – from Wells’ description of people’s routines to the big band broadcast that keeps getting “interrupted” to Ray’s (Tom Cruise) relationship with his ex-wife and children. How is this element (the world we recognize before the world we don’t) important to the narratives, and to science fiction as a whole? Does the emphasis on these slices of mundane life have something to do with the reason this story – and similar ones – endure, and, why or why not?
Toward the beginning of the novel, the protagonist offers this question: “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. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?” By giving an example of human genocide and then proceeding to tell the story of the near destruction of humanity, the narrator puts the humans and Martians in a realm of shared amorality. How does this affect our sympathies as we read the novel?
In all three versions, despite the advancements in weaponry, the Martians perish in the same manner: disease. In a story entitled “War of the Worlds,” one expects the dominant creatures from each world – Martians and humans – to fight for the right to inhabit the planet. However, the humans spend most of each story running or hiding, their attacks having very little effect, and instead the defender of Earth comes in the form of bacteria. What does this make us think of our birthright of existing on Earth as bought “by the toll of a billion deaths,” and how does it make us think about the possibilities of human space travel and colonization of other planets?
The book and radio play both seemed concerned with ensuring there was science behind their science fiction: from descriptions of how gravity worked against the Martians to conjectures on the operation of the heat guns. The 2005 film, however, did away with these interludes and instead focused on the action and events of the invasion. What does a viewer lose from not having these speculations and explanations, but also what might they gain?
As I read the beginning of the novel, I think it is a typical science fiction. One of the reasons I believe is the hypothesis based on the fact. For example, the author lists the fact that the Mars is “revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world.” This conclusion is quite true but the other “fact” after this fact is questionable. However, at that time, people cannot figure out whether the conclusion is correct or not. So, the author use the fear of the unknown to make a great story and attract readers.
The end of the story is very interesting and remind future people who want to explore the outside world. Even strong like Martians, they will die by small, tiny, unseeable bacteria. Nowadays, people soon will have the ability to explore other planet and live there. This novel let people knowing the bacteria on another planet could kill people easily like the bacteria on earth.
In Spielberg’s vision, since it is a film, so he created a family who suffered from the alien invasion. Also, the Martians land in a different place. In the novel, it is London and in Spielberg, it changes to New York. One reason I believe Spielberg choose New York because it produces by Hollywood. However, people cannot neglect the fact that New York is the center of the world in 21 century, just like London at the time. Choosing places like New York and London will shock the audience at that time and show how powerful the Martians are, even the strongest country and the biggest city on this planet cannot stop the Alien forces. Moreover, because of the development of technology, the Martians are more advance in Spielberg’s vision. In the novel, the battleship the Thunder Child really kill two Martians but in the movie, the Martians used their defense system stopped all the attack from outside.
There’s a concern regarding how they see us; a search for kindred conscience in the author that suggests they similar tous. Is this a response to new evolutionary theories, or an extreme outlook on the consequence of racial superiority?
To what point is this book a critique or response to england’s success in the imperial enterprise?
The author comes up with a greatly original and unique idea, only to butcher it with the most remote, short-coming and ellusive point of view regarding such an event. The exploration of entire plotlines of great economical and socio-political impact are disregarded almost entirely. Why?
Wells’ “War of the Worlds” minutely depicts the suburban Victorian culture. He neatly describes a miser man clinging desperately to his money while in risk of being killed; a hypocritical and weak priest, who in the midst of the end of the world, loses faith and runs; hordes of people who, in spite of the pressing news, still walk around peacefully in their Sunday clothes, comfortable and reassured… In Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds”, though, social criticism appears to be practically absent. Or not? There are almost no individuals being pointed to, but is it actually because today’s society demands a different portrayal? We are not individuals, we are, as Spielberg’s movie best shows, a mass that walks tight, like sheep, in the same direction, stupidly curious and uncreatively evasive.
Questions of the week:
– I feel like this is one of the more popular questions of the class, mainly because we all have such different views of what a story should look like and what science fiction should accomplish. Nonetheless, I’ll ask it as well. What would a new and most modern retelling of War of the worlds look like? In what ways would it be similar to the ‘05 movie or different from it?
– As I muddled through the many versions of War of the Worlds, I was struck by how preoccupied we are with our own humanity throughout the story of an alien invasion. Humanity is a character in this story, sometimes scarce and other times out in full effect— for example, the women being attacked in the book, or the main character killing a mad companion in multiple retellings. What remains so terrifying about other humans that we need to portray it in each version of this story? Is that rooted in something particular?
– and finally, because it keeps bothering me: Why are the aliens and Martian weaponry portrayed so differently in each retelling? Why is this the part of the story that is always updated and/or changed?
PANIC : The article “The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic” jumped at me because there’s a similar outburst in dance “lore” with the premiere of Igor Stravinsky and Vaslav Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring in 1913. (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/10061574/The-Rite-of-Spring-1913-Why-did-it-provoke-a-riot.html) I think collective panic and human desire to fear the unknown or strange is interesting to discuss when talking about War of the Worlds in any of its guises, or anything creative in general. Why are so many of the characters in sci-fi creations afraid? Why do they react violently and furiously en masse? How does mob mentality play into Wells’ story? How does panic linger in human minds and take the form of trauma, or as the narrator describes, “I must confess the stress and danger of the time have left an abiding sense of doubt and insecurity in my mind” (142)?
PLANETS : Wells’ ability to imagine the elements of Earth, mainly water, as a source of defense against alien life is fascinating. The first chapter introduces Mars as a viable planet for alien life because of its terrestrial elements: “It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence” (5). While Wells also describes Earth from an alien’s perspective as “a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas” (6). Eventually, the swift undoing of the invaders had everything to do with how our planet’s ecosystem, biology, and elements react to outside disturbances: “In the end the red weed succumbed almost as quickly as it had spread. A cankering disease, due, it is believed, to the action of certain bacteria, presently seized upon it. Now by the action of natural selection, all terrestrial plants have acquired a resisting power against bacterial diseases — they never succumb without a severe struggle, but the red weed rotted like a thing already dead. The fronds became bleached, and then shrivelled and brittle. They broke off at the least touch, and the waters that had stimulated their early growth carried their last vestiges out to sea” (115). I love how sci-fi dares to question something so primal and essential as water, a thing we think we know but still have a lot to learn about. I mean, we’re all taught at an early age that Earth is 70% water, but then we grow up and realize that less than 10% of the global ocean has been mapped, and we’ll probably never reach 50% by the end of this century.
(1) In Chapter 6 of Book 2, a remarkable passage reads: “For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of men, yet one that the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly confronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house. 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.”
>Often the narrator uses animal parallels to signify the diminished superiority of humans at the hands of Martians–e.g. humans as “mere ants” in the eyes of martians, as rabbits, as cattle etc.–as science fiction tends to look inwards, what can be said of the self-imposed dominance/superiority/hierarchy that humans have placed over the “other” inhabitants of earth and how does this relate to our sense or view/s of superiority/inferiority when compared to imagined extraterrestrials not only in War of the Worlds but in other alien narratives?
(2) On the imagining of the martians, is it at all possible to write a creature that is not limited by human-other binaries and perceptions? (some common depictions/descriptions: eyes *not unlike* humans, legs *unlike* humans’, arms/legs *like* tentacles) Is it possible to make up a creature so entirely new that it does not fall flat as simply a distorted-looking humanoid or earthly animal of a sort? In the adaptations assigned and other films in general, which alien portrayals did you find refreshing and which clichéd?
Thinking broadly in line with the assignment for today, is there a place for trope or archetypical characters in SF? In modern SF? Many times archetypes (the military man, the priest, the scientist, the reporter, the damsel in distress, just to name a few in the 1953 War of the Worlds film) can come to stand in for perspectives and attitudes an author may wish to discount or argue against by way of the plot or protagonists. Are there more effective ways to do this? Examples?
As Wells states of the original illustrations for his novel, “Alvim Corrêa [the illustrator] did more for my work with his brush than I with my pen” (http://www.openculture.com/2015/09/the-first-illustrations-of-h-g-wells-war-of-the-worlds.html). Each media version of the War of the Worlds is a profoundly different experience although much of the content is similar if not identical. The powerful mental impression made my an image can hardly compare with that crafted by the word. What does this truism mean for SF? Are certain medium more effective for expressing an author’s idea? Or must be mindful of the media itself and take each text as within its own realm?
Could we describe the type of invasion fantasy that is WotW as civilizationally-narcissistic? The idea that beings that can easily manage inter-planetary travel, produce death-rays, and impenetrable forcefields choosing to not only visit little ol’ Earth, but to destroy much of it in an invasion strikes me as a profound projection of us into the unknown void. That our civilization is worth being watched and then invaded.
How do adapters choose which bits to use directly and which to change to update the work for their current audience? Or, more directly, what makes the introduction of the original novel so powerful and eloquent that Spielberg’s only value-add is Morgan Freeman while Orson Welles also chooses (or perhaps was limited to) adding voice?
Notions of time, continuity, and preparation seem to play important roles in each version, but especially the novel and the 2005 film. However, in the novel The Things are launching a landing mission prepared for by years of observation, whereas in the film the tripods were seeded on earth for millennia– In the later case, why is the narrative of the “forerunner” race so prevalent and powerful that it shows up in everything from Mass Effect, to War of the Worlds, to traditional Greco-roman and biblical mythology? (I.e. Atlantis-myths, nephilim, etc)
The 2005 film seems to be in partial reaction to 9/11, the 1953 adaptation to the cold war. Orson Welles’ version is from 1938, almost certainly relating to The Great War and it’s impending sequel in ’39, but H.G. Wells was writing in the late 1890s at the end of the Victorian period. Well’s depictions of the tripod violence seems so in concert with depictions of the great war– chaos, suddenness, charred bodies and the weight of technology, even gas and fire weaponry, as well as the ‘indirect fire’ of the shelling from Mars — and yet many of these weapons didn’t exist and combat environments weren’t seen until at the earliest the russo-japanese war decades later. Where, then, or from what,was Wells’ pulling from when he imagined these scenes?