The War of the Worlds

I"ve been reading a biography of Orson Welles and during the chapter on his infamous Halloween radio broadcast in 1938 I was reminded I've left off my survey of H.G. Wells novels, and now turn to his third, the famous The War of the Worlds. First published in 1897, it's kind of amazing that he had the foresight of space travel, considering humans couldn't even fly yet. But most of this work is interesting for its social commentary.

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own, that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water." So begins Wells' novel, which is told by an unnamed narrator who first relates that explosions are detected on Mars. Later, an object will crash into Surrey, England, where he lives, and he will go and investigate.

The object is a cylinder, and gawkers gather around the pit. When the cylinder opens, a heat ray incinerates all around, and civilization goes into a panic. The narrator seeks to distance himself from danger, as the Martians travel around in mechanized tripods: "A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather."

The narrator, separated from his wife, is in survival mode. He watches the machines destroy everything in their path, and later sees the creatures themselves, tentacled, like octopi, feeding on human blood. They seem bent on the complete destruction of humanity.

Eventually the narrator finds himself paired with a curate, and they are stuck together for a few weeks when the house where they are staying is crushed by a cylinder. The curate, perhaps reflecting Wells' opinion of religion, is a weak man: "He was as lacking in restraint as a silly woman. He would weep for hours together, and I verily believe that to the very end this spoiled child of life thought his weak tears in some way efficacious." Later he will meet an artilleryman, who has grandiose ideas of building a new civilization underground, taking only the strongest of society. He objects to the use of the word war: "'This isn't a war,' said the artilleryman. 'It never was a war, any more than there's a war between man and ants.'"

Wells makes frequent references to man and other animals, in some way having us understand that this is just the nature of things--we were once on top, and now we're not. He calls attention to the arrogance of man, and compares us to the dodo: "So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food, 'We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear.'"

As anyone who has seen the Steven Spielberg movie, the Martians are done in by their lack of immunity to bacteria (the narrator says there are none on Mars, but how would he know?), and Wells says that it was God's lowliest creature that saved the day. On reading the book this time, I was reminded of how the Native American tribes were decimated by the spread of diseases that they had never been exposed to, and wonder if Wells knew about it.

As with most science fiction, the hard science takes a back seat to the social science. Much of the book is concerned with Wells' views on evolution and the survival of the fittest, which means that God really doesn't have anything to do with it. The artilleryman's point of view could be construed as promoting eugenics, which Wells did subscribe to--that humanity was becoming degraded. This kind of view is on the edge of some pretty ugly opinions about race. But then he kind of dismisses the artilleryman as a character, leaving us wondering.

The book ages pretty well, but not completely. A lot of it is taken up with the geography of Surrey. If you don't know where Woking is, the several mentions of where the narrator and the Martians are going won't matter. Also, the style is very formal and without humor. Even under Martian attack, I think most people will find, will need, to find something funny along the way.

The War of the Worlds is, at last, a troubling book. Not because it makes me worried about an alien invasion (at least not from Mars) but because it drives home the point that we're all of us just animals, and that man is now at the top of the food chain is much more accident than design, and that it could all come crashing down. Instead of Martians, we may be done in by cockroaches.