PREVIEW： Chronicles #5 ｜ H.G. Wells： The War of the Worlds
Episode Stats
Summary
The Worlds is a novel by H.G. Wells, written in 1888, about the alien invasion of the planet Earth by the Martians, and set in the early 19th century. It's a classic sci-fi novel, and in this episode, we're joined by the future King of Mars himself, Beau, to discuss the story.
Transcript
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Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Chronicles, where this time we're going to be
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talking about The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. And here this time to talk the story through with
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me is the future King of Mars himself, Beau. How are you, sir? Fine, thank you. How are you?
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Yeah, really good. Really, thanks for coming on to talk all about such an iconic novel.
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Yeah, no, I'm happy to. It's one of my favourites. I've read it a number of times.
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I've re-read it, or actually re-listened to the audiobook over the weekend, so it's fresh in my
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mind. I actually haven't seen the Tom Cruise version, or I watched a bit of it and then
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abandoned it. I wasn't interested. But the original book is superb. Well, I'm personally
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of the opinion, being a prudish purist, that the War of the Worlds shouldn't really be set in any
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era other than Victorian England. The story works best in Victorian England, partly because it was
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responding to a particular moment in British history. It's responding to the British Empire
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at the height of its power during the Pax Britannica, the 1890s, when there was a feeling of
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real national confidence in the air. Now, I suppose you could say that about America 2000, when the film
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was trying to... But it's just not the same. In order to work best, it's got to be kept in the time
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period it was meant to be in. You know, definitely. The original book is very, very, very firmly set
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in South East England, or in and around the Greater London region. And it's interesting because
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I'm from the South East, and so loads of the... Like the original Alien Invasion lands at Woking,
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of all places, that's sort of west of London. A lot of it is west of London, but he goes on to talk
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about Kent and like Chelmsford. South End, Chuburness. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, that's my part of the
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world. So when I first read it, I don't know how old I was, 16 or 18 or something like that,
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probably, I think, when I first read it. And I'm like, this is... I know all these places.
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Right, yeah. Like you mentioned, quite a few places in central London that I know.
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So it's in a really specific time and place, it's set. And yeah, that's the original thing. Why mess
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with that? Absolutely. And I learned as well that apparently he, in order to sort of get the story
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really clear in his mind, H.G. Wells went on a bike ride from Woking, because he was living in Woking
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at the time when he wrote it. And so he went on the bike ride through, you know, through Weybridge,
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through Shepparton, into London, around Putney, and then obviously through down into Essexway.
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Right. In order to really... And what I'll do is I'll ask in edit to get a map put up of the Martian
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warpath and where it goes through, because it's one of those ones, you know, because of his style
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of realism, where he writes about everything in such minute, realistic detail as to the nature and
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character of these little villages from the home counties and, of course, the main capital of
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London, that you really... It adds this layer of believability to really, obviously, outlandish,
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you know, the idea of Martians coming from space and conquering London at the height of the British
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Empire. And so, you know, using that style of realism, it grounds it all and makes it much more
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believable in the reader's mind. And it's very, very deliberate. It just didn't happen to do that.
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Actually, when I was listening to it at the weekend, I was... I did think to myself of... I'd probably
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never do it, but of following that course. People must have done it before. Oh, I'm sure.
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The course of the aliens. But yeah, it goes from out in Woking, like through places like Hampton
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Court and Richmond and then to Primrose Hill and on and on. Yeah. It'd probably be a really nice journey.
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If the weather was nice, it'd probably be really nice. Probably. But it's very, very deliberate because he was
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writing for a sort of middle class audience, the type of people that would live in West London
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or Surrey. They are sort of his audience. They are his people, if you like. I mean, he was one of the
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things I think we should say early on is that he was extremely famous in his own lifetime. He was a
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massive bestseller in his own lifetime. I mean, his breakthrough was The Time Machine. Of course.
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And everything after that was... I mean, I've heard some people say he was one of the most
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famous people in the world. He was absolutely literary royalty. Even by the time this...
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Certainly after War of the Worlds came out. Yes. Which was, for those who might not know,
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it first came out in a serialized form from 1893 to 1895. And then it was published as one
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single physical story in 1898. Right. And that's another thing to mention, isn't it,
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to begin with, I think, is that it's obviously of its time. Yeah. So, like, it's pre... the very,
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very, very late 19th century, sort of higher Victorian period, late Victorian period.
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Men couldn't fly yet. The Wright brothers hadn't done their thing yet. Right.
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So at one point, for example, he talks about the secret of flight. Yes.
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That men will learn the secret of flight from the aliens. Oh, yeah. He couldn't... In 1895 or
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whatever, we didn't fly yet. No. Well, in balloons, but not powered flight. Sure.
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And there's all sorts of things like that. There's a few things where he mentions something
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about various things about Mars and things about Venus, even, where we now know that's
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not true. That's not correct. But they didn't know that yet. No. In the late 19th century,
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there's a number of things like that. I mean, H.G. Wells is a really interesting life,
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period of his life. So he was born in the 1860s, 1866, I think, and died when he was about
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80-odd, just after the war, just after World War II. Yeah. Lived through many really important
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historical events. Saw a lot. Yeah. A lot of change. And he's one of those people who would
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have been, was, had his formative years and his early adulthood in sort of the classic
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higher Victorian period, but then lived through World War I, saw the world, what it was like
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before and after World War I. And most people say that lived through that, that it was night
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and day. It was like, if you didn't know what the world was like pre-1914, you can never
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really know. And then even at the end of his life, he saw nukes, right? Right.
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In a year or so before he died, he would have seen Hiroshima and stuff and fulfilling a lot of the
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sort of themes he talks about, that science can go crazy. Yeah. That men need to be careful about
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his science. He might blow up the world or kill himself one way or another. Yes. And he saw it
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sort of almost happen. Yeah. Nagasaki, definitely as devastating as a Martian attack with their heat
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rays and black smoke. Yeah. Yeah. So one thing I suppose it's also important to mention just in
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terms of the style of novel that it is, is that it comes from a specific, not that all novels ever
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written about this were fit into this particular time period, but there was a particular time period
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from about 1870, the end of the, with the Franco-Prussian war, till about World War I, which was known
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as invasion literature, which was responding to a particular anxiety at the time in Britain about
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the possibility of invasion that had come after the sort of startling success of Prussia against France
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and the, the genuine militaristic might of them. And that if the Germans so wanted to, this might,
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this anxiety, you know, might become a reality. And one of the novels that first responded to this
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was written in 1871 by a British general called George Tompkins Chesney, who wrote a novel called
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The Battle of Dorking, in which a very non-specific people who spoke German attacked Dorking and the
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people of Dorking were cut off from everyone else outside.
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Yes. And this, and so the War of the Worlds, about, you know, responding about, well, 24 years later,
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is still a part of that heritage. But H.G. Wells obviously brings in a much more science fiction spin on it,
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being, and that's another thing, when you talked about the fact that he wrote, uh, The Time Machine
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and, uh, you know, Martians coming from space, he was the first person to, to create these ideas.
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The, the very idea of, we take, you know, Time Machine, Back to the Future, you know, Avengers,
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all these sorts of things now, like, oh yeah, time travel, that's just a thing that we associate
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with science fiction. Well, he came up with it. He came up with the Time Machine.
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Hmm. So yeah, a number of things you've said there, a straight, so responding to that straight
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away. The reason why H.G. Wells is, it's still brilliant in and of itself, standing alone.
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The reason why he's so pivotal is because, yeah, lots of themes that he talks about. He
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Mm. It's odd to think in our world of not having time travel stories, but The Time Machine
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Apparently, no one ever wrote about time travel before then. And lots of other things that
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Um, the other thing, I think Jules Verne wrote a story about, um, Germans sending, like, a
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whole fleet of, of, uh, blimps, or what do they call them? Dirigibles.
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Oh, yes. Or, um, what was, what's the German word for them?
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Zeppelins. Fleets of Zeppelins across the Atlantic to attack, uh, New York. Mm.
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Um, yeah, this idea that they knew, they sort of knew or thought that future wars would
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have aerial bombing of cities, but they hadn't actually, again, the Wright brothers hadn't
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actually built any powered planes yet, but you did have, uh, blimps.
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Yes. So, um, yeah, I suppose one of the main things, not just, um, well, there's one line
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in there, isn't there, actually, where he says something about, he's surprised that civilization
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didn't wake up to the fact that they've been invaded right away. Mm. And even though like
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a day or two into it, London is still just, hasn't really woken up to the fact that it's
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happening. Yeah. And he said that if the news had come across that the Germans had mobilized,
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there'd be much more panic in the streets. Yes. And that's interesting because that's
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like, you know, 20 years before world war one people, it was still already in the public
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consciousness that the Germans might do something like that. Right. Um, that's an interesting
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sort of insight into the, the last years of the 19th century. Um, um, um, yeah. And I
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suppose one of the biggest things is not just the fear of the Germans invading or anyone
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invading. Um, but the, the, the thing, I'm sure you're going to talk about it, the theme
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of the Martians being imperialists or colonizers even. Yeah. It's kind of an allegory for imperialism.
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HG Wells was sort of fairly anti-imperialist. He was something of a, a red, a little bit
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of a socialist. It didn't consume him or his writing particularly, but it is there. Yes.
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Um, and he was sort of an early proto feminist. It's a bit strong, nothing like third or fourth
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wave feminism, but no Victorian style, uh, very, very early feminist type person. Um, so
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he certainly liked women. Yeah. Yeah. He loved the women's. Um, no, but this idea that, um, certain
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colonial, uh, powers would go around the world and sometimes, sometimes be quite brutal. So
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there's one line in there, isn't it, where he talks about the Tasmanians mentions the Tasmanians. Yes.
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And apparently in real life, that was something that played on his consciousness because we went
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to Tasmania, Tassie, little Island off the bottom of Australia and, um, unspeakable things happened
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to the indigenous people there. Yes. And apparently one time he was on a walk with his brother and his
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brother put, put the seed in his head. He said, imagine if some alien creatures came down that was
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more advanced to us than we are to Tasmanian aboriginals. And they treated us the way we treated
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them. Imagine that. And anyway, that's one tiny little seed and one tiny little, um, a bit of
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motivation to write War of the Worlds, apparently. Hmm. It's great, isn't it? Oh, it's fantastic.
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It's a real page turner. It is. Uh, some books, even very, very famous books, they're a bit of a
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chore, particularly 19th century books, can be a bit of a chore, right? Dickens, as good as he is,
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sometimes it's quite slow. You have to trust his process. You have to trust the payoff with Dickens.
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HG Wells is just straight in and you're hooked. Oh, I am. Most people are. Oh, I am too.
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It's great. Yeah. Um, you can tell actually from, uh, whoever wrote the screenplay, I don't
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know if it's actually Jeff Wayans himself, wrote the, wrote the narration for the seventies
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show, um, how they've abridged that opening line. Yep. I've remembered verbatim the Richard
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Burton. Oh yeah. Thing. Should I do it? I'll go for it. Yeah. I shall do my Burton. I should've
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handed it over to you really. I feel bad now. So that goes, it might not be 100% verbatim,
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but it should be quite close. He says, um, okay. On the spot. He goes, uh, nobody would
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have believed that in the closing years of the 19th century, human affairs were being
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watched from the timeless worlds of space. Nobody could have dreamed that we were being
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scrutinized as somebody with a microscope might study the creatures that swarm and multiply
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in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets. And
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yet from across the Gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to our own regarded our earth with envious
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eyes. And slowly and surely they drew their plans against us. Okay. So what we're going to
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do now is we're going to edit out my entire reading for that. And we're just going to keep
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that magnificent. That was terrific. To make a short out of that. Yeah. You've, uh, you've
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been practicing that in the mirror, haven't you? Well, no, there's a few things. When I was a kid,
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I was taught that you should learn things by rote. Yeah. Just a number of things. Anything you like.
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Yeah. That's a great skill. Anything that you, any little monologue or any little speech from a TV
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or film or anything, you learn to, or a poem. Yes. Or a paragraph from a famous book, a bit of
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Shakespeare. Well, I've got the whole of Once More Unto the Breach, that whole monologue. I know it.
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It's, uh, yeah, I've got, I've got a couple of dozen different things that I'd know off by heart.
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Yeah. And that's a great one to have. A few bits of Shakespeare, a couple of short, shorter poems.
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Mm-hmm. Um, and it's really, really good, especially when you're younger. If you sort of
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force a, if you've got like a 10-year-old, 12-year-old, 13-year-old kid, force them to do
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that a bit. Yeah. And, um, and you, they'll remember it forever. Yeah. Because most of these
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things I learned when I was much younger. Mm-hmm. And they don't, it used to be a cornerstone
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of education. Mm-hmm. To force children to learn things by rote. And it fell out of favor many,
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many years ago, because frankly, dumb people don't like doing it or can't do it. Mm-hmm.
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So it fell out of favor to teach kids to do that. Sure. In fact, it's a brilliant, um, it's
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a brilliant tool, um, for learning, comprehension, memory. Yeah, totally. All sorts of things.
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So I've had that in my head. Yes. For 25 years, 30 years, probably. It shows. It was brilliant.
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I love that. What a great thing to witness. The, uh, so I suppose, but from that as
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well, to go back to a point you were saying earlier, as the story moves on, so the first
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cylinder is fired from Mars and it shoots down in a Horsell Common near Woking, right? That
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level of detail. And like you're saying, people just go about their day. Mm-hmm.
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He talks about the fact that, you know, just the teenagers walk down the street flirting
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with one another. Students are still at school studying, you know, mums and dads are putting
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the children to bed. You know, he also talks about the fact that, uh, so that the narrator
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himself, he doesn't have a name, of course, as well, you know, this, but you know, just
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for people who are listening, they, it's all done from first person narration. Uh, and even
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though there is a second point of view, which is the narrator's brother, it's obviously told
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in a style in which the brother has survived the events, told the narrator, and then the narrator
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has chronicled them as an eyewitness account of, because the narrator chronicles what happens
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in the home counties and around Woking and the rural villages, and the brother chronicles
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what actually happens in London, in the big city. And so you get the point of view of what
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the effect of the Amartian attack has on both the rural and metropolitan aspects of British
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society. There's a whole section in the middle where it cuts away. This is what happened to my brother.
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Yeah. Basically. Yeah. Yeah. Um, no, it's really good. And it's all in the first person,
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which makes it quite immediate as well. Doesn't it makes it slightly more easier to read?
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Harry was saying the other day that, um, many, many books aren't written in the third person
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sort of omniscient narrator anymore, because the modern, the modern reader doesn't like that
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as much. But anyway, uh, one of the worlds is basically in the first person. Um, yeah.
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Yeah. Which makes it much more immediate. Um, so yeah.
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Yeah. So then, uh, obviously some things to talk about is that, um, the, the British, uh,
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men, you know, obviously the military comes in and security to try and figure out what's
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going on. And the, the cylinder is of course piping hot and all the time you can hear inside
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it. This is screwing noise as the Martians are starting to figure out how to come out
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the cylinder. They have to wait for it to cool. And then they start coming out. And the first
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thing of course, that, uh, any civilized people do is they, they try to communicate with the
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Martians and check whether or not they're, they're hostile or whether or not they've come
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in peace. And of course, the Martians are entirely here as a matter of conquest. Uh, which goes
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back to what we were saying about the, uh, HG Wells making the allegory towards colonialism.
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And they're the Tasmanians. This isn't about trade. This isn't about trade routes or commerce.
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This is about soul. Just domination of, of another planet.
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Well, one thing I'll say before we even get there, there's a big set of fairly long section
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at the beginning before even the first cylinder land, where he sort of talks about and describes
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sort of normal life a bit and, uh, where he's just a writer, the, the narrator is a writer,
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isn't he? Um, well, it's HG Wells, basically, and, um, he sort of describes a little bit sort
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of the, the mundane life and that, and the astronomers had noticed sort of something going
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on on Mars and the one or two astronomers that actually sort of keep eyes on Mars at
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all times had noticed some sort of plumes of smoke and things. And they assume that there's
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later when they realize there's cylinders or something heading towards them, they assume
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a giant, some sort of giant gun has been fired. A sort of giant cannon has fired these cylinders
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at earth. Um, but even though it's sort of mentioned in a tiny, a tiny little corner
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of the telegraph somewhere or something, no one really, no, the whole world doesn't care
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about it. Most people don't know about it at all. And he's got his friend Ogilvy, the
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astronomer and he goes up and he looks through the telescope at Mars one night before they've
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landed and sees with his own eyes, one of these giant puffs of smoke on the surface of Mars.
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Um, but yeah, once they land, um, you know, the, the, the, the people of, uh, England sort
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of just curious and hoping, think they probably won't be, there won't even be any men inside
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it. It's probably not even hollow. Um, and if there are, when it does appear that there
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are creatures inside when they finally unscrew it, they don't immediately assume they're going
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to be hostile, but they just are right. They're just immediately murderous and terrifying. And
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the description, I mean, HG Wells' descriptions are great. There's a reason why it's what
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considered one of the all time greatest writers or certainly sci-fi writers and probably my
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second or third favorite sci-fi writer, uh, after Arthur C. Clarke and Jules Verne. Um,
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in fact, I put Jules Verne third and HG Wells second, just because of the English thing.
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Right. Anyway, uh, based. Um, you can't put a Frenchman above HG Wells.
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And his, but his descriptions, like for example, the first descriptions of the aliens, like the
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horror of it before they've even done anything particularly evil or murderous. Yeah.
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He just, the first time he lays eyes on them, there's like all the descriptions of how it
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makes your skin crawl. And then they're sort of truly alien and weird. And, um, yeah, it
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