Subject 1

The War Of The Worlds Background

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 scrutinised 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. With infinite complacency, men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. . . . Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. . . H.G. Wells

The War Of The Worlds was originally written by H.G. Wells just before the start of the 20th Century. His characteristic pseudo-documentary style of writing influenced the story and led to the basing of the story in real world places (this was used to dramatic effect in the radio broadcast based on the novel by Orsen Wells which was transmitted in 1938 to an unsuspecting American audience). Wells was inspired by the fact that Mars was very close to earth around the start of the century and a great deal of scientific debate on whether the canals were evidence of another civilization on Mars ensued. His prophet-like writing predicted tanks, aerial warfare, gas warfare, laser like weapons and industrial robots and he lived to see the horrors of nuclear weapons. Wells was a great Utopian but was forever pessimistic about the fate of the human race.