Continuing with my interest in soaking up the classics, over the last few days I've had the pleasure of finally reading H. G. Wells's original 1895-97 epic, The War of the Worlds. I read a 1978 paperback copy by Golden Books of the US, still in surprisingly good condition, though the cover has been laminated with clear vinyl for durability.
Everyone knows the story, at least the high points, and it has been adapted for all conceivable media countless times—but the original remains a wonderful read and a highly worthwhile work in its own right.
It's not a long work, and the style is easily followed, if one has developed an ear for the over-formal, often over-loquacious, 19th century expression. Just as with the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one must allow, ever so slightly, for changing modes of expression over time, as indeed for the idiosyncrasies of individual style. Besides the formalities, there are figures of speech we just don't use any more, nor have we in living memory, but I find myself mentally editing, translating these expressions into the common word usage of today, so there is no jar or difficulty. On the same point, it's worth noting that Robert Louis Stevenson's style could be a lot more jarring to the modern ear than either Doyle's or Wells's, at least in Jekyll and Hyde, though not, oddly, in Treasure Island.
The War of the Worlds is the story of an English summer late in Victorian times, when a profound change came over the world. London and its immediate counties was the venue for the arrival of alien invaders, a desperately overused theme in science fiction in general, but Wells's novel was the first time in literary history that it appeared, and one can imagine the effect it must have had upon its first readers. For contemporary society to be faced with an implacable foe whose technology was a mystery and who regarded human beings as we have been guilty of regarding all other lifeforms on our own planet, can easily be seen as a commentary on the ills of the world, the way that science fiction has often been the “safe” vehicle for social critique and discussion. There is considerable comment on this aspect out there in the literature, and indeed Wells was inspired to write his novel by aspects of British colonialism.
The narrative is a first person account through the eyes of an unnamed protagonist (which seems a little odd to us today), as well as a second-hand account from the character's brother of other events elsewhere. It would seem the Martians landed only in England (a tradition Dr Who has upheld staunchly, as surely as aliens only ever arrive in America in American works). The story is told nigh blow-by-blow and from the personal viewpoint, as a man alone struggles through catastrophe, fire and battle, and the horrors of the refugee columns fleeing the invaders. Wells was indeed quite graphic in his descriptions, more so than I had expected, though tasteful enough to sensibilities attuned to modern Hollywood's seemingly ubiquitous brutality and splatter.
The action takes place mostly between Surrey, to the west of London, and in the city itself, and I found myself most engaged when the protagonist walks through parts of London I know well—on streets I have actually visited myself. He walked up Baker Street to Regent's Park at a time we know Sherlock Holmes to have lived there, so two aspects of the fictional reality of the times intersect in a strange and very neat way.
The 19th century notions of high technology are of course quaint to us, but it is fascinating to see what Wells was forecasting with his Martians. Walking machines—we've done them, if not tripodially; the “heat ray” preguesses the laser beam by sixty years; the “black smoke” is a terrible foreshadowing of chemical weapons as used only twenty years later; and the “handling machine” with which the Martians construct new systems after landing can be easily visualised by us as it would seem to be a large robot, equipped with handling arms, styled more or less on a scorpion.
Wells has a wonderful turn of phrase. His descriptions of the English countryside, his character sketches, and his oratory describing scenes of disaster and conflict resonate off the page over 126 years later, and make his era come very much alive. Likewise, he was clearly an astute student of human nature, for in this work he finds the best and worst among his fellow beings.
The novel was perhaps controversial in its time for its depiction of religion as both the cornerstone and crutch of society, yet also a thing of words in the mouths of those of insufficient moral strength to face the situation. The character known only as “the curate” is the epitome of this—a man of God who is a profound coward, who loses his mind so thoroughly that he must finally be “silenced” by our protagonist as they hide from the Martians. This part was transposed (sanitised) in the 1953 Americanised movie into the noble if misguided priest who walked out before the war machines with a cross and a Bible to exorcise them—and was vaporised.
Perhaps the device of Earthly bacteria being the downfall of the Martian organisms is too simplistic for us—surely germ theory would long predate the ability to travel between worlds—but Wells explains it in terms of the course of an alien evolution, that bacteria and viral bodies did not exist on Mars, thus were not foreseen before the invaders exposed themselves to our environment. It seems a stretch to us, but flew well enough in its day.
The entire novel can be plotted on maps. It takes place in the world of the time, and those places still exist. One could perform a tour throughout the locations, from the village of Woking where the first Martian projectile landed, through to Primrose Hill in London, where the last war machines came to a halt as their pilots died. It would be quite an adventure to recreate the events of that long-ago summer.
If you're a fan of Sherlock Holmes or other Victorian to Edwardian classics, I highly recommend Wells's The War of the Worlds. It's not much like the dark derivative filmed by the BBC a few years ago, and no US production has anything in common beyond a name and a concept. (The US has always updated and set the story locally, from Orson Welles's famous (infamous?) Mercury Theatre radio production of 1938, to Spielberg's highly derivative movie of 2005, and others.) To read the original is to put yourself into a world long gone, yet tackle notions which were at that time wholly fresh and profoundly disturbing.
I could not locate a file of the cover of the edition I read, so instead present above the famous cover of the very first issue of Amazing Stories, from 1926, in which the novel was reprinted.
Mike Adamson
