HG (Herbert George) Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific writer with more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories to his name. His output was an eclectic mix, including works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and futurism (he foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something akin to the World Wide Web) – but of course what he is best remembered for is his science fiction, following the remarkable rapid-fire publication over a four-year period of instant classics The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898).
The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between mankind and an extra-terrestrial race. It presents itself as a factual account of a Martian invasion as witnessed by the narrator. You know the plot: apparent meteors have rained down around the narrator’s home town of Woking (through which I travelled by train recently, prompting me to make a mental note to write this very blog), but which of course turn out to be far from inorganic space rock, but instead very much not-friendly space aliens bent on destroying humanity.
The first edition was illustrated by British artist Warwick Goble: inky, black-and-white depictions that were eerie, imaginative, exciting, and thoroughly of their late Victorian time. Later, in 1906, the French editions were illustrated by the Brazilian artist Henrique Alvim Corrêa, which turned out to be something of an upgrade, adding to the evocation of Wells’ imagined creatures and their vessels, and of which Wells himself mightily approved.
The War of the Worlds has spawned half a dozen feature films and television series, a record album and musical show (Jeff Wayne, of course), but perhaps the most impactful dramatisation came in the 1938 radio programme directed by and starring Orson Welles. It was very much played for real and if you happened to miss the introductory monologue – which thousands of listeners did – you could be forgiven for thinking the drama was a live newscast of developing events. The programme famously created widespread panic with hordes of people believing that a real-life Martian invasion was underway right then in North America (Welles had swapped out Woking for Grover’s Mill, New Jersey). It’s easy to scoff at the mass credulousness of the public, but you decide: here’s a clip of the broadcast. Might you have believed it, too?
