September 28, 2013
I had assumed that, with the course on YA literature that I'm taking this semester, that I'd be adding a few more posts to this blog this month. But the past couple of books were ones that I'd already read, and with so much to do with my new teaching job, among other things, I just haven't been reading. I started The War of the Worlds way back after I finished the last book, but haven't read much this past month. I even found a copy of the book in my little school's library, so that I could have an actual book instead of using my Kindle there. In all honesty, the book didn't pull me in. But I made myself sit down and finish it today...I actually read more over the course of the day than I had over the last few weeks, even though this is not a long text by any means. And I did enjoy it more as I went along.
Obviously, science fiction is a hugely popular genre today. There are countless books, movies, and TV shows about aliens, or outer space adventures. But back in Wells's day, I don't imagine that the genre even really existed. I can think of a couple of science fiction texts that, like this one, were true pioneers of the genre. As I read the book today, I could clearly see how many of Wells's ideas still exist in most science fiction works today.
For instance, the idea that alien invaders would be more intelligent creatures than us lowly humans. The Martians, basically brains and tentacles (the gross aliens on The Simpsons seem to have been directly inspired by the ones described in the book), are described as being highly evolved creatures, asexual (their offspring growing off of them, like buds on a plant), without digestive organs (they inject blood from their living victims, such as humans...). Well, I guess it would make sense that people who are intellectual enough to develop the technology to travel across space and time to discover life would be more intelligent than us on Earth, since, you know, we haven't discovered life out in space. Now in our time, with space travel and satellites and stuff, we know that no intelligent life exists on the other planets in our solar system. But back in Wells's time, I guess that life on Mars was still a fanciful idea. Indeed, the idea of 'Martians' still exists in popular culture to this day, though more contemporary science fiction seems to take the more realistic (?) standpoint that if intelligent life is out there, it's very far away, like the stars. We know now that space is vast...we can still only speculate if other life is out there.
Now, as far as the story itself, it goes like this. Mars sends off ten missiles, which contain Martians and the necessary equipment to build war machines. They intend to take over Earth, and exterminate all human life. They all land in the countryside adjacent to London, and begin their violent attacks from there. This is told through the eyes of an unnamed narrator. I wonder what Wells's intention was, in not naming his narrator? We're with him through most of the book (besides the chapters that follow his unnamed brother)...I found it annoying. I mean, if a reader is meant to sympathize with a character's plight, some emotional connection should be established. There are times when the whole unnamed narrator thing works, and this wasn't an example of that. When the narrator and his wife are reunited in the end, after four weeks apart and worrying that the other one was dead, I didn't really care (she wasn't named, either!). Yet the narrator, who is supposed to be writing his personal, unique account of the days of terror until the aliens perished from the strange atmospheric elements (a very anticlimactic yet maybe scientifically realistic ending), is writing as though he assumes that the reader will know who he is. Maybe he's supposed to be the author as character? But I don't know enough about Wells to care about the character in that case...
So with the lack of connection with the narrator, and the mundane descriptions at the beginning of the book, I didn't really begin enjoying the book until the narrator was really able to describe the aliens, and their effect on the small part of Earth that they were able to invade. I was especially fascinated by the descriptions of a Martian plant, a blood-red weed, that the Martians brought with them, that spread rapidly through the English countryside and London, but died quickly on Earth as the intelligent aliens did.
I also found the artilleryman's predictions of a world ruled by Martians to be interesting. He, observing that the aliens were capturing people for food, felt that they would capture and breed humans, not just as food, but as pets. He also expressed ideas of forming an underground network of humans, only the ones who were physically and mentally superior, to eventually find a way to fight back against the aliens while living like rats. Certainly, this idea has been expanded on in other science fiction works.
Wells is one of the few authors to begin the science fiction genre, and though I didn't find the characters in the story to be particularly compelling, it is fascinating how the works of today can be directly traced back to this. If anything, I'm glad that I read this book just for that reason alone. As I write this post, I am listening to Orson Welles's interpretation of The War of the Worlds, the famous one that freaked a bunch of people out in 1938, on the YouTube app on my iPhone (okay, I have to admit, I've spent time playing games on my phone when I could have been reading). He has the invasion happening all over the United States, rather than just in one concentrated area in England. If aliens ever do arrive, in peace or otherwise, I wonder where they actually would land? Would they even be able to navigate that well? But then, in order to answer those questions, we'd have to be able to answer the big one: Does life really exist on other planets? At least, any life worth contacting? Maybe there isn't ever going to be a way of knowing. But the idea of it still captures the imagination, and undoubtedly, the genre of science fiction will only continue to evolve.
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"Is there life on Mars?" Well, yes, I believe that microorganisms were discovered there at some point? But it's not really anything worth noting...
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