War of the Worlds

There have been so many adaptations and retellings of HG Wells' War of the Worlds on radio, film and music that it is easy to forget about the original novel upon which the whole phenomenon is based. Orson Welles' 1938 radio rendering had many of the more gullible elements of the USA's north-eastern states fleeing for the hills; Jeff Wayne's popular 1985 musical was a top-selling LP; and more recently Tom Cruise posed and grimaced his way through Steven Spielberg's modern-day-America retelling.

The plot is therefore familiar to most people: Martians invade earth and comprehensively rout the most advanced country of the day using technology far advanced of our own, and in so doing threaten humankind. Just when oblivion seems total, defeat is then thrust upon the aggressive invaders in a blaze of irony by the smallest beings on earth - terrestrial bacteria.

The plot is commonly credited as a fore-runner of the great science fiction tale - weird machines, death, destruction, alien invaders and human survival are all common themes in science-fiction today. It is also another in a long line of novels which challenge man's self-importance in the grand scheme of things.

There is a great deal more to the book than its tale; it is important to understand the circumstances that led to Wells writing it in the first instance. Compare Wells' original book with the adaptations and you realise the true depth of the story which many of the retellings cannot possibly capture. When an adaptation resets the time and place it also at a stroke erases the context, and therefore the meaning, of the original.

Wells foresaw a period of sustained warfare caused in part by the imperial tendancies of many of the European powers. Also during this time the world of science, and astronomy in particular, was in a state of excitement at the once-in-60,000 years proximity between Earth and Mars which allowed clear observations to be made of the surface. One astronomer, Schiaparelli, had noted that Mars appeared to be riven with channels, or "canali" to give it its Latin meaning. There was widespread suggestion amongst the chattering classes that these were somehow forged by intelligent life. This placed in the public imagination the possibility of life on Mars. Also, during this period the x-ray machine had been invented, which was considered to be a phenomenal advance in an era of heavy dirty industry.

Wells distilled these events into a yarn in which London, then the centre of the civilised world and capital of the most powerful empire of the day, is itself suddenly attacked by Martians on huge tripods wielding "Heat Ray" guns. Written in 1898, it is narrated by an unnamed journalist who recounts from a time set a few years after the events that nearly led to man's destruction. Wells also sets the story in rural Surrey, then a place of quaint villages, and as archetypal as any area of the concept of a middle England comfortably far from any turmoil. This is a strength of the novel it adds to the eeriness of the tale that many of the places are so real. Standing in modern-day Hampton or Woking, for example, it is easy to reflect that the place has done a splendid job in rebuilding itself after its smiting by the Martians more than a century before.

The tale also turns on its head power relations at the time. During an era when European powers held numerous colonies who had been beaten into submission by advanced technology, it is the turn of western society in War of the Worlds to bear the brunt of strange and despotic practices utterly alien to their own.

The story follows the adventures of the journalist, whose experiences bring him into contact with people and events which satirise, amongst other things, religion and rebellion. When almost all hope is lost for mankind, when its rout seems to be complete, the story proceeds unexpectedly onto the downfall of the Martians, attacked from within by earth-bound disease. This turn of events surreptitiously states that even the immensely powerful are susceptible to the simple whims of nature.

The book is a classic because it is so much more than just a rip-roaring story. It is a fable, complete with multiple messages, a satire on man's over-estimation of his own power, a criticism of imperialism, a forewarning of war (Wells was right, the 20 Century was one of unprecedented conflict) and a study of human spirit in the face of adversity. I had expected it to be stodgy Victorian fare characterised by rambling, dated and impenetrable prose, but it is instead very easy to read, and is made all the more enjoyable by setting such a fantastic tale in quite normal everyday places. The result is a science fiction novel which is eerie, chilling and downright unnerving, not because it is rooted in fantasy, but because it is so real.