So today we have a guest review by the delightful Mr Chris King...
While most reviews
tend to focus on new things and how fun – or terribly – they are, I like to
think of the turn of the 20th century, a time I would have fit in with perfectly
(or so I have been frequently told). The movies (2005 and 1953) of The War of the Worlds just do not do any
justice to the original story of world invasion, by H. G. Wells, a master who
defined science-fiction far more than I think Asimov ever did. The Invisible Man and The Time Machine were both
genre-defining and The War of the Worlds
is no different; it had to be called a ‘scientific-romance’
when it was first published.
So, the movies are
bad. The 2005 version has pre-earthed tripods emerge, shoot people (but not
their clothes, so that the first time I saw it – and I have to say I did not
watch much of it – I thought that the tripods turned people into clothes). This
causes Tom Cruise to go into an angst spiral that lasts most of the movie (so I
am told). It causes him to shout at his children and throw toast at windows
while his children (whom he is estranged from, gasp, the drama!) explain how
sticking your fingers in your ears and saying the name of the yellow Tellytubby
repeatedly helps deal with the destruction of the world (or you know, America –
I think it was pandering to an American audience’s perception of ‘the world’).
So, that’s that one over with.
Now the 1953 movie
was better. It got in the breakdown of society as men are thrown from escaping
lorries because all they have to offer is money. A church is the last refuge of
humanity and they know full well that it will not work. There were no annoying
children or jam covered windows. The film also had the first example of nuclear
weapons used on aliens (but alas, to no effect), a trait since borrowed by Independence Day and a host of lesser
films. However, the film avoided the book’s historical context and instead set
it after the First and Second World War to contextualise their concept of what
a world war (or a war of worlds, gasp) would be. The film also missed out the
red grass as a further invasion of Earth. The tripods flew rather than having
three legs (and don’t give me all that about them using three invisible
magnets, people don’t name things after magnets if they can help it). And, you
know, they missed out the fact it’s set in Britain.
Now to the actual
book.
It is 1897ish and
Britain has colonies across the globe. The American War of Independence has
proved in the long-run to be good for Britain, sparking the decline of France (except
that one spat of wars) and the beginning of the second expansion of the British
Empire. It’s left America as a musket-using nation still recovering from a
civil war whose only noteworthy acts were a failed invasion of Canada, being
defeated by Britain, and genocide. American’s greatest achievement is trading
with Britain (them coming to us was a lot more lucrative than us going to
colonies on the other side of the Atlantic). Oh yes and the Americans have also
banned slavery several years after it was banned in the British Empire and had
a Civil War about it. Rest assured that as far as the world is concerned
America is about as much in it as the island of St. Vincent.
Now, the world – not
just the British Empire – is invaded by Martians from space with their
death-rays, black death gas (the gas is black, it does not bring back a
medieval disease, please note the lack of capital letters) and their vastly
superior walking fighting-machines. However, this is where the title is more
apt than you think. This is a war, and the British Empire is not without its well-trained
infantry, artillery pieces and a powerful navy. This is no extinction averted
at the last minute by you-know-what but a back and forth war that Earth is
currently losing. During the war the narrator witnesses the destruction of a
fighting-machine as an artillery round strikes through the front panel of a
fighting-machine and destroys it. Also the narrator’s brother escapes the
mainland thanks to the efforts of HMS Thunder Child which is capable of engaging the
fighting-machines on equal terms (or there-about) and it destroys two
fighting-machines before three more ironclad naval ships arrive to (we assume)
avenge the destruction of HMS Thunder Child. There ends the book The War of the
Worlds: The Coming of the Martians.
The second book The Earth under the Martians is much darker and
shows the effects of the losing war on the people much more than the shock and
awe first book. It is here that we really start to meet the characters. There
is the narrator (unnamed), his brother and two traveling companions whom the
narrator is separated from. The narrator is philosophically inclined and that
is about all we know. However, he meets more interesting people, the
artilleryman who reports the events of a lost battle against the
fighting-machines and the Curate with whom the narrator is trapped for several
weeks. While with the Curate, the deeper parts of the book come to the fore. These
are situations that prove that Wells was incredible forward thinking, or just
proved right.
Wells’ description of total war, of black gas and the precision strikes
against railways, telegraph stations and so on, are exactly what happened in
the Second World War. In the First World War military theorists in the army and
navy postulated on the creation of a land-dreadnought, a walking
fighting-machine of which the land-ship or ‘tank’ was made. Furthermore the
Curate’s plan that with a handful of men they could go underground and, when the
time was right, emerge again and defeat the Martians, was a plan held by the
British (and many other national governments) as a genuinely viable strategy in
the 1960’s. It was to be a counter to nuclear war (if ‘counter’ that is the
right word – though I understand that the viable response in the face of
nuclear war is to become dust as soon as conveniently possible).
There were other aspects that did not take off so well, but Wells is
hardly to blame. His teacher Huxley had written the (fantastic) Brave New
World, where people are engineered to specific roles at birth, socially,
physically and mentally. The Curate’s idea of which books are worth keeping to
teach children and which traits should be removed from the genetic pool, has
thankfully not caught on, but Social Darwinism is standard in Germany today. (The
concept is most often applied to jobs: if you are better than someone else then
you should take the job from that someone else, no question; whereas in Britain
we tend to take the best at the time and as long as they don’t mess up will not
be replaced, rather than constantly fighting for the job you find a niche. You
make it your own, something horrifying to my German friends). But in the War
of the Worlds, the Martians are better evolved (or so it seems until the
end), they have superior skills and technology, so should we humans roll over
and die or is fighting back fighting against our own principles? Clever stuff.
Overall, Wells is divine in terms of writing. This, one of his greatest
works, is one you should check out. It is not too long either and it is
astounding that so much was fitted into such a small number of pages. Yet the
amount that Wells has inspired people and genres from this book attests to its
value. I will now leave you with the interpretation that only came to me
recently, before finishing on a quote from The War of the Worlds.
The War
of the Worlds is (amongst all the other things) a discussion of
colonialism, showing what happens when the roles are reversed. That justifies the
events being entirely within Britain. Now that humans are all together again
for the first time since the evolution of man in Africa we seem to have decided
to kill and annoy each other. So, say a nineteenth century European army
arrives on an exotic island and they decide that they want rid of the natives.
They use their heat-rays or ‘guns’ that fire smoke into the air as they release
shots to kill people. They have their fighting machines pulled by horses. They
bring other animals and their own plant life and in the fighting the invaders
win. However, in doing so the invaders die to the one thing their smoke guns
and fighting-machines cannot counter: diseases. These diseases take a toll on
the invaders while the natives suffer from the weaponry. This was perhaps best
illustrated in 1895 when France sent tens of thousands of troops and laborers
to Madagascar to fight the native Howa (who had been given minor British
assistance). While the Howa fled or died in battle every French unit suffered
between 75-100% casualties from disease. Ten men led by three officers was all
that was left of a 250 man engineer company and both the French and Howa
suffered in the short war (for more info see The Guinness Book of More
Military Blunders).
I like history.
‘And before we judge 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 own 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?’
With many thanks to Chris King for this review.
And next week it'll be back to me (Katie), probably with a review of The Help by Kathryn Stockett
With many thanks to Chris King for this review.
And next week it'll be back to me (Katie), probably with a review of The Help by Kathryn Stockett
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