The War of the Worlds

I know you have heard this story before, but every good piece of writing should lay out its premise in an attempt at inclusivity, no matter how so-so. Back when various countries felt that wars that targeted the world they too inhabited made sense (yes, I know, now they just call their forces the UN and their weapons sanctions) and when the radio (a transistor-type thing with an aerial) was a key source of information, not just top-20 music shows and public-interest debates...

I ran out of space. No one is going to read a 20-line introduction. Assuming you read this five-line one.

Orson Welles, author of the book and the radio play

A radio drama broadcast of War of the Worlds caused widespread panic (this was also when Britain and the US were the only worthwhile parts of the world, before Britain kindly withdrew from countries like Africa - sorry, continents - all continents look the same). War of the Worlds being an invasion of Earth (only the important parts) by Martians whose intelligence ranks off the MENSA charts. Not that there were was time to check, but one can only assume.

Again, I ran out of space.

The drama was an abridged version of Orson Welles' novel (even then we had remakes and probably complained that the narration was not as we had imagined), a blatant critique of war and the desperate flailings of human beings to save themselves, updated to time and place. Unfortunately, the scenario was a little too realistic: the play included a weather report, the music and conversations of a dance hall (like a club slash hoe-down with ginger beer) interrupted by the report of an astronomer, followed by news broadcast about the touch-down of a meteorite.

While Curiosity happily pokes holes into Mars (I don't mention the Japanese attempt to sweep up intergalactic dust because I doubt they want that #epicfail mentioned), in this 1930s version we don't have a chance because Cyclops slash snake things wiggle their way out of the meteor and begin firing at anything that moves (thus destroying a lot of the land they hope to inhabit, double #epicfail). And so on and so on.

The actors and sound effects are so good that people believed that Earth was being attacked by sophisticated unanthropomorphic beings and it was every man, woman and child for themselves. The story was then picked up by another broadcaster - which, of course, according to the two-source rule means the story is legit. Apparently, people legged it out of the city, their favourite donkey, wife and cutlery set in tow. Pregnant women went into premature labour. Ostensibly because of the fright. The mind boggles.

This story took way longer to tell than I thought. If you had heard it before, I hope you had the sense to scan, in which case, YOU CAN START READING AGAIN HERE. If not, sorry for you.

Facetiousness aside (in arm's reach because I will need it again), people had just been through a war of epic proportions (hence why it was called a 'world' war) and the Great Depression, and a second war was brewing. Governments already had access to atomic bombs, which they would shortly drop on Japan. That is crazier than believing in an alien invasion, from my perspective.

Hats off to Orson Welles for creating a critique of war so realistic it created panic (although perhaps he should have peppered it with disclaimers like 'this is only a critique; all resemblance to people or nations is intended, but only in so far as they are the weakest link in the survival of humanity'). Unfortunately, the wrong people listened.

Assuming that your only knowledge is this story and the Tom Cruise version, please reset said knowledge now.

The book is thin, more of a novella, and usually sold together with The Invisible Man and Journey to the Centre of the Earth. They all derive from the same time period and are loosely considered fantasy. I read it a few years ago but I have the memory of a coffee filter (by which I mean it contains coffee grounds). But (from what I do or don't remember) it is more different to the movie you know than even the two versions of World War Z.

In some ways I felt 'underwhelmed' by the book (since 10 Things I Hate About You this is now a valid word), because it had none of the action we have come to expect since Star Wars (4-6, to clarify). The basics of the book match up with the display of Tom Cruise's machismo, but the main character is an astronomer who plays a much more important and intellectual role - the explanations for what is happening being more important than the shooting at special effects. There is none of the thundering intrusion that sparks off alleged machismo, although there are many thundering explosions and crashing buildings. More important than all this is the sense of helplessness (i.e. negative machismo) the characters fall deeper and deeper into as they realise that one of humanity's usual tactics work - even an atom bomb (we resort to this quickly).

Spoiler alert: it is Mother Nature that triumphs. Now, I am no great fan of casting processes as thinking feeling entities, but in this instance even I got goosebumps from the sense that the world is far greater than us - that even intelligent beings are subject to the law of survival. The more we prod at Mother, the more we discover there are processes beyond our imagining happening under our noses. Literally. We act like a runny nose is the harbinger of doom, but scientists keep discovering new bacteria we couldn't function without. And isn't it (facetiousness buried) amazing that our bodies are so finely attuned to this 'other world', too?

A week ago, I watched the first movie adaptation from the 1950s. I confess I didn't expect much - I was really just boosting my movie cred. I watched it after Terminator II - don't judge - that series of movies is a seething mass of debates about what qualifies as life, what cost are you prepared to incur in search of greatness... Mind running away; trip mind with rope.

The movie begins with a short narrative, in this booming voice that might convince me of anything, even that politicians don't hand over their hearts at the first session of Parliament. The scene is a town that our astronomer hero happens to be visiting. (What a coincidence in a world of coincidences.) One night a meteor crashes into the national park nearby. Nonplussed, some police and other officials trudge out to look, thinking they might start a theme park around it (not a joke).

But our scientist is suspicious because he can work out how fast a meteor of that size should have been travelling in his head and works out that it should have made more of a mess. However, he is equally oblivious to the danger. At the site, he meets the heroine, who kicks ass. She lectures at a nearby university but smoothly switches roles to wartime nurse when needed, and near the end organises their retreat and even drives the bus to safety. Ok, she breaks down into an hysterical mess sometimes, but us women, y'know, just can't avoid having normal emotions.

Out comes Cyclops, who starts setting fire to the things that move, so the army does the same. Well, tries to. Mostly they set fire to inanimate things like trees. Unlike us modern viewers, no one is prepared for the force field that protects Cyclops and his siblings so it takes them a while to catch on. Long enough to waste an atomic bomb. In the meantime, Cyclops' extended siblings have touched down all over the world (except the country - I mean continent - of Africa) and are destroying cities en masse.

People flee the city, at the behest of civil authorities, because the alien can't tell you're moving if you're parked among fields of vegetables, preferably corn, right? Because, if I moved into a place with fleas, I would only exterminate the spots I meant to sit in. (The others I would train into a flea circus.) Anyway, as every apocalyptic fiction writer drills home, we are a species of survivors, where surviving means bullying everyone who has something you want. Survival of the fittest, right? The ones who don't bully, pray, because then life and death is out of their hands.

(What would I do, since I'm so glib? Find a way to hide right under their noses, preferably in a group because my chances of dying are less. Sorry, I can't help it. I would think. And more people means more thinking. I think. So I would double-back to the parts of the city they'd destroyed and find shelter underground, preferably with smart people. In this case, the best thing to do would be to wait them out.)

The scientist also does a clever thing: he chops off an eye and analyses it. (I couldn't do that, because I didn't even understand his description of how it worked or why his girlfriend shows up differently on the scan.) Anyway, then they are attacked (by human bullies), they find a church (which unfortunately is attacked - hide underground, I tell you. Or in a tree) and then the alien buggers did. Just drop out of the sky. Not one of them could adapt fast enough to survive our bacteria and so are overcome. (Knowing humans and our survival ranking, at least one of us would have made it, busters.)

Then comes the bit about Mother Nature (an entity that is really a coincidental process). I have goosebumps thinking about it. About how we are blithely stomping around, discovering something whose evolution we played absolutely no part in, not realising how indebted we are to our ecosystem.

Yerp, here are our heroine and hero, with an alien eyeball

What I enjoyed about the movie though (what bumped it up past the recent one and perhaps past the book - shock horror) was the focus on the people and not the action. I find this often with older movies. Part of this is the casting (who could ever match the charisma of Humphrey Bogart or Natalie Wood?) The movie stars Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. Barry plays our scientist as ever so slightly arrogant, witty and ultimately open-hearted. Robinson is enthusiastic but not embarrassingly so, level headed and open-hearted.

They fall for each other quickly (partly because there isn't my time to take it slowly and also because they are, remember, open-hearted) but he is oblivious to her break with stereotype because he's not the sort to be vaguely aware of stereotypes. I am not one for sentimentalism, you may remember. I don't like epigrams unless they are funny because I can't resist finding a logical frame to them. (There usually isn't one.) Then everyone thinks I'm overthinking it, but really, I think everyone is underthinking it.

But the scene where he has tried to leave town but is beaten up as people hijack his car, and then realises the same thing may have happened to her, is touching. He follows the trail she would have taken, probably reenacting what has just happened to him and could have happened to her over and over in his head. He acts within his nature, with bravery that does not require him to beat up people in his way, even when they try to beat him, or with one manly hand destroy alien ship after ship and the other while clutching a catatonic woman to his chest.

When he finds his love in a church, there is a crowd between them and the two of them do the required swimming against the current to get each other thing. Apologising to people as they do. They hug and then just stand there leaning against each other for a while. An alien ship is crashing into a stained glass window and they just stand there, happy to be with each other. Nor is there any smooching. Ok, maybe one, but more a kiss than a smooch.

Ok, so maybe I am sentimental. I just usually keep the emotion safe and warm within a blanket of facetiousness.

So, My Point? My Point is obviously that the 1953 movie is much better than the recent one, that radio is a dangerous weapon, that everyone except the Russians should leave space expeditions to Nasa, that underwhelming is a new word, and that aliens are not as intelligent as we think, because a recon team would have warned its siblings to not bother with Earth because it is governed by a (female) entity that is really just a process who is just otherwise like that.

While those are all good Points, the best is that I am usually surprised when I pick up a classic work, whether DVD or book, and especially when I have seen an updated version. The characters are sympathetic because they don't imagine they can take on monsters singlehandedly but that doesn't mean they are less brave. It isn't even part of their frame of reference. I usually expect to seethe at a woman forced into the dichotomy of mother and whore, but what I get is usually more complicated, something I am actually proud of (a forced connection, so perhaps what I mean is hopeful).