Notes On The War Of The Worlds

[poliphilo]

There's a lot going on in this book- the invention of a SF trope, a critique of colonialism, a Swiftian satire on Man, a prophecy of the "total wars" of the 20th century, a settling of scores. 

I love the geographical exactitude. Wells pedalled round the Home Counties on his bicycle scouting locations. 

Take that, Woking!

Our narrator is a gentle, respectable, scholarly type- a model English gentleman of the kind we expect to front a late Victorian adventure story- but put him in a hole- where the rules of civilised behaviour no longer apply- and he turns into a beast- and ill-treats and murders his weaker companion. Wells pulls a similar trick in Tono-Bungay. 

 

I first read this in my early teens. It disturbed the fuck out of me. I could take Dostoevsky; I couldn't take Wells. I now see why.

Comments

[butterscotch711.livejournal.com]

I read this last year. I thought I had read it as a kid but if I did it was too complex/horrific for me and it all went over my head.

Reading it recently, it is clearly the urtext of every horror apocalypse/zombie breakout/uncanny suburban infiltration text I've ever encountered (as well as the texts which borrow the alien invasion stuff directly).

The wobbly realism of the geography and the characters' movements felt quite recent in style (despite content).

The final passage with the invaders pathetically crying 'Ulla ulla ulla' made me feel physical revulsion as well as wonder, empathy and loneliness. One of the most gripping depictions of what it might actually be like to encounter aliens I've read.

I think early Doctor Who was very influenced by Wells, and the Daleks in particular owe a lot to the Martians.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Daleks are Martians on the cheap.

Time travel, space travel, alien invasion, utopias and distopias- there aren't many SF ideas Wells didn't pioneer.