The Martians are Coming
Today marks the launch of our fourth serial blognovel feature: H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds.
We're so accustomed to versions of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds being terribly technologically advanced...stemming, no doubt, from Orson Welles' notoriously successful radio drama rendering from 1938, the horrible Haskin film of 1953 (ok...it's a classic, but it's still cheesy as all-get-out by today's standards), and much more recently Spielberg's 2005 rendition starring Tom Cruise.
The liberties taken with these dramatic versions, however, cause the story to differ in several levels of significance from the book, which was written and set in the late 19th century -- the same insdustrial-age mechanical epoch as Wells' The Time Machine...an era when machinery drove the economy of the world, electricity was a new and mysterious energy source, and the very idea that there could still be something magical in the world beyond human understanding had not yet been revived as it would be in Haskin's age of radiation.
Readers will find Wells' text much less technical in its explanations of phenomena than the dramatized versions (remember, Welles' radio play was not a reading of the book, but a mock news report, while Haskin's interpretation, and its later tribute by Spielberg, has its own original features). It is a very human story, told with the practicality and matter-of-fact approach that punctuates all of Wells' writing.
Don't forget, Alice is still wandering around Wonderland (today she meets the Caterpillar!), Pierre Annorax is just about to sail aboard the Abraham Lincoln to investigate the monster of the deep, and the 'Time Traveller' has just returned from another journey. Tomorrow, Dorothy will encounter her famous cyclone, and we're dying with anticipation for the introduction of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Happy reading!
We're so accustomed to versions of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds being terribly technologically advanced...stemming, no doubt, from Orson Welles' notoriously successful radio drama rendering from 1938, the horrible Haskin film of 1953 (ok...it's a classic, but it's still cheesy as all-get-out by today's standards), and much more recently Spielberg's 2005 rendition starring Tom Cruise.
The liberties taken with these dramatic versions, however, cause the story to differ in several levels of significance from the book, which was written and set in the late 19th century -- the same insdustrial-age mechanical epoch as Wells' The Time Machine...an era when machinery drove the economy of the world, electricity was a new and mysterious energy source, and the very idea that there could still be something magical in the world beyond human understanding had not yet been revived as it would be in Haskin's age of radiation.
Readers will find Wells' text much less technical in its explanations of phenomena than the dramatized versions (remember, Welles' radio play was not a reading of the book, but a mock news report, while Haskin's interpretation, and its later tribute by Spielberg, has its own original features). It is a very human story, told with the practicality and matter-of-fact approach that punctuates all of Wells' writing.
Don't forget, Alice is still wandering around Wonderland (today she meets the Caterpillar!), Pierre Annorax is just about to sail aboard the Abraham Lincoln to investigate the monster of the deep, and the 'Time Traveller' has just returned from another journey. Tomorrow, Dorothy will encounter her famous cyclone, and we're dying with anticipation for the introduction of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Happy reading!
posted by Serial Outerworlds at 6:19 AM
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