War of the Worlds by H G Wells

JunkMonkey said:
Though it has to be said Mr Wells was overly fond of the word 'tumult' which gets wildly overused in this book. 10 times in one chapter as I recall.
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It may be a good point that I don't remember / didn't notice that. Or a sign of my advancing age! :D
 
Matthew Hughes said:
What an odd comment. You're criticizing the shoulders so many have stood upon.
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I think it's pretty healthy to want to criticize these things.

I've not read the book, but I really love Jeff Wayne's 1970s musical version!
 
I love drawing the Martian War Machines. I'm sure I've posted these bits of art of mine herabouts before:


and a strip in Mythaxis Magazine
http://www.mythaxis.co.uk/12issuev18.htm

And here's a cover for a binding I did of a pile of Marvel's sequel comic ('based on concepts by HG Wells') Killraven. It was a load of overwrought cobblers but did have some groovy art from P Craig Russell - and the first interracial kiss in a mainstream American comic.

Killraven cover by liam, on Flickr
 
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They're brilliant, JM: why haven't I seen these before?
 
I was wondering today if War of the Worlds isn't the most sequelled bit of SF ever. There have been god knows how many books TV series and comics that posit a "Second Invasion" - damn! I just remembered... Frankenstein. Ah well.

Sadly the site that carried galleries of hundreds of covers of editions from all over the world has vanished but has been archived by the Wayback Machine here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160413155447/http://drzeus.best.vwh.net/wotw/

Well worth a browse.

Hobbit said:
They're brilliant, JM: why haven't I seen these before?
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Thank you. Not sure they're 'brilliant' but they amuse me.
 
Hobbit said:
YEESSS.... :) I reviewed the concert/theatre version of the musical a few years ago. It was wonderful.
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I listened to the whole 4 sides of the original vinyl version today. I must have not made it to side 4 before as I didn't recognize any of it and it's awful, but the other 3 sides are all brilliant! Is David Essex in the stage version too?
 
Ropie said:
Is David Essex in the stage version too?
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Sadly, no. Have seen it more than once. The original tour version did have Justin Hayward & Chris Thompson in it, though: Justin was as good as I thought he would have been, Chris's version of Thunderchild on the night was stunning. The roles of the Artilleryman and Parson Nathaniel (in part, I guess due to the sad death of Philip Lynott in the 1980's) and Beth have always been played by different actors/actresses on different tours. First tour (2006!) was Alexis James as the Artilleryman and a surprisingly good (but then, he is an opera singer!) Russell Watson as Parson Nathaniel.
 
JunkMonkey said:
Sadly the site that carried galleries of hundreds of covers of editions from all over the world has vanished but has been archived by the Wayback Machine here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160413155447/http://drzeus.best.vwh.net/wotw/

Well worth a browse.
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a quite amazing collection
i found the cover for my copy it is inscribed to my dad for Christmas 1925 when he was 10
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I have my dad's copy too. (Somewhere in the guddle that is my bookshelves) And his copies of The First Men in the Moon and The Time machine too. They were the copies I read to my daughter. There's powerful juju in handing books down through generations like that.
 
I was bought this quite boringly dust-jacketed edition by my aunt & uncle. But the books in it were quite something....

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JunkMonkey said:
Unless you read them out loud to an appreciative audience.

I read War of the Worlds as a bedtime story to my oldest daughter (she was probably aged 10 or so at the time). It was great fun. It's a cracking read. (Though it has to be said Mr Wells was overly fond of the word 'tumult' which gets wildly overused in this book. 10 times in one chapter as I recall.)
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That's a good point. Thanks for bringing it up.
 
Abelard said:
I wonder if TV and movies spoiled the American imagination to some extent, even though I enjoy a decent flick as much as the next guy. Wells wanted to develop the Martians and their ships with a good deal of detail, from what I remember of the book. Reading requires us to develop our imaginations, and it's a far more individualistic act than watching a movie is. You read a scene in a book, you imagine it in your own possibly quixotic way, depending on the voice of the writer and the level of detail. Then you watch a movie with your friends. How you feel about what you're watching can color the scene, but the basic information in the scene leaves nothing to the imagination. The movies are more of a shared experience than books are.
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I think a lot of the detail put into older sci-fi books is because they had no visual reference with the reader. Today film and comics have largely educated the audience in a shared language. We know what an alien death ray looks like, what a flying saucer looks like, tentacle mouthed aquatic horrors, etc. But back in the day trying to convey these images via words was difficult.
 
jason10mm said:
I think a lot of the detail put into older sci-fi books is because they had no visual reference with the reader. Today film and comics have largely educated the audience in a shared language. We know what an alien death ray looks like, what a flying saucer looks like, tentacle mouthed aquatic horrors, etc. But back in the day trying to convey these images via words was difficult.
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That's a good point. Technology has definitely re-calibrated our standards as to what it means to put out a good story.
 
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