First published in 1898, The War of the Worlds was the first of many tales concerning good old God-fearing planet Earth and alien invasion. Modern stories of alien invasion or human annihilation, like Independence Day or Alex Garland's 28 Days Later, are but mere hand-me-downs in comparison, sloppy seconds that owe everything to the unquenchably creative imagination of the original Sci-Fi master, H.G Wells. The scenes of desolation that confront Garland's lonely antagonist as he walks the empty streets of London in 28 Days Later are taken straight from the final chapters of Wells' original. How many times have we seen 'laser beams' on screen in a million B movies and dozens of Hollywood rip-offs? How many episodes of Star Trek have we to put up with? How many more sci-fi plagiarists will have their second rate books published on the back of Mr Wells's masterpiece? On the plus side, without The War of the Worlds, there may never have been a Star Wars. There may never have been a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
What is most astonishing about this book is the fact that it was written in the nineteenth century; post Verne, but pre-Hitler. The themes explored in the book - the notion of invasion, of social disruption, war and domination -, are all themes associated with the subsequent World Wars. Wells was not only dealing with his own notions of extraterrestrial life and the choices man faces in his slow path toward earthly extinction; he was also perhaps toying with the notion that mankind, in its fin-de-siecle obsession with technology, could indeed bring about its own, premature destruction through the war of nations. In this sense, the book also has much in common with Orwell's '1984'.
As the world awaits the release of Spielberg's 2005 film, the sheer inventiveness of Wells' original story becomes clearer with every day that passes. Inevitably, Spielberg has set his story in America - how inventive, how novel! -, thus, in my opinion, totally undermining the potential of a modern cinematic interpretation. Why not set the story in Georgian London? Having the multitudes escape the aluminium tripods of the "big greyish rounded" aliens in horse-drawn carriages, as Wells describes it, would surely provide a greater cinematic aesthetic juxtaposition. Instead, Tom Cruise will look upon the wreckage of a destroyed white house, perhaps, or a red-weed encrusted Statue of Liberty; images that have been played with before, therefore diminishing the impact that a ruined Westminster or a wounded St. Paul's would provide.
At 180 pages, it is a short book; but Wells manages to build the tension from the very first page. Those first few words, made even more famous by the irrepressible Orson Welles during his hysterical radio transmission of the story to an unexpecting American public in the 1950s, continue to send shivers up the spine. "No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligence greater than man's."
The majority of the story is written away from the glare of the Martian 'Heat-Rays', and instead plays with the impact that invasion has on ordered society. But the threat of the invaders instils a suspense throughout that has the reader racing through each chapter in order to look again upon the alien intelligence. Perhaps the most thrilling episodes are those where man displays his own ability to fight back. But the finale, and the images described in the final chapters, make the book an undeniable classic.
