Eve Of The War
http://www.focusgaming.co.uk/eveofthewar/

Pearson's Magazine 1897 found in Oxfam shop!
http://www.focusgaming.co.uk/eveofthewar/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1427		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  McTodd [ Sat Jan 27, 2007 4:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Pearson's Magazine 1897 found in Oxfam shop!
I had a right stroke of luck today! I went for a potter down Portobello Road this afternoon (for non-UK readers, it's a very popular market in west London, with many unusual stalls selling antiques as well as all the usual stuff) when I happened to pop into an Oxfam charity bookshop. To one side was a stack of 8 or so volumes of Pearson's Magazine, £40 the lot. So I had a look and found they were 1890s issues - heart quickening, I checked to see if the two volumes with WOTW were there, Jan-June 1897 and July-Dec 1897, and they were! Condition was excellent. Not owning a car to be able to cart off the lot, I wasn't bothered about buying the whole pile, so I asked the manager if she minded splitting them up as I only wanted the two. Seeing her hesitate I just said, "Look, I'll give you £40 for the two I want and anything you get for the rest will be a bonus," to which her immediate response was a delighted, "Okay!" Damn good thing it was payday yesterday...
Author:  Lonesome Crow [ Sat Jan 27, 2007 5:44 pm ]
Post subject: 
:o Wow, good find McTodd =D>
I believe there's some bits in the original Pearson's Magazines that aren't in the Novel, you'll have to let us know, [-o< Please [-o<
Author:  morrisvan [ Sun Jan 28, 2007 11:31 am ]
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Congratulations on your find McTodd. I'd also be interested in any changes such as the extra passages involving the flying machine. There's also a mention of the narrator seeing the Martians dissect a live human and also acting as a special constable before returning home. I'd also be interested in the passages leading up to the narrator's discovery of the dead Martians as appantely the Artilleryman didn't appear in the original serialisation. The character disappeared after the destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton.

Thanks.
Author:  McTodd [ Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:00 pm ]
Post subject: 
Well, I have to go out now so I'll be brief:

The serial is no surprise to me as I have a copy from years ago of 'The Collector's Book of Science Fiction by H G Wells', a big fat hardback containing facsimile reprints of original Wells serials, including WOTW. It's the next best thing to having the original Pearson's. Although out of print, it's very common and can be picked up for as little as a fiver from the net:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0890092087/ref=nosim/bookfindercom01

There were some good discussions about the differences between serial and novel on another forum:

http://robk.proboards13.com/index.cgi?board=book&action=display&thread=1116534148

http://robk.proboards13.com/index.cgi?board=book&action=display&thread=1095622499

http://robk.proboards13.com/index.cgi?board=chat&action=display&thread=1109391579

Anyway, gotta go, TTFN!
Author:  McTodd [ Sun Jan 28, 2007 2:55 pm ]
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I ended up going back to the shop today and bought the other 6 volumes (1896, 1898 and 1899) for £20 (yes, yes, I should have just asked them to keep the others back for me yesterday, but £60 in total for all 8 is still a bargain).

Turns out Vol 2 (July-Dec 1896) has two Wells short stories - 'The Rajah's Treasure', which wasn't published again in a collection until 1984 and which I'd never heard of before, and 'In the Abyss' (ill. Warwick Goble)!
Author:  morrisvan [ Sun Jan 28, 2007 4:17 pm ]
Post subject: 
Thanks for the information McTodd. You seem to have had a very profitable weekend. There is a copy of Wells' complete short stories in York Library so I'll have to see if "The Rajar's Treasure" is in it.

I was having a look at the forums you recommended and I was intrigued by the scenes that were apprantely cut from the original serialisation. Mention was made of a cage containing captured humans above the house that the narrator and the Curate are trapped in. The vivisection scene and that the Martians used humans for sport. That idea was used in Marvel's comic book adaptation and it was implied that was what happened to the man trapped in the pit when the first cylinder opened. I always assumed the Martians killed him and either drank his blood or disected him to see what humans were like.

Its led me to think as to what exactly the Martians had planned for the human race. As well as slave labour and for food would the Martians have planned to assimulate with humans as was portrayed in "Scarlet Traces: The Great Game." Could they have wanted to breed artificial humans? The Artilleryman certainly suggested there would collaborators or human controllers overseeing groups. And what about the humanoids brought to Earth? Christopher Priest's "The Space Machine" says they are the original Martians; enslaved by the Master Brains they created to solve their planet's climate change. Could here have been other alien humanoids in the cylinders who had ended up on Mars or whom the Martians had enslaved having visited other planets.

Just some ideas I'm kicking round. Congratulations once again.
Author:  Lonesome Crow [ Mon Jan 29, 2007 9:04 pm ]
Post subject: 
Thanks for the info McTodd.

I enjoyed the Space Machine although I felt Priest rushed the ending of the book somewhat, the Time traveler spent years constructing his machine and they knock one up in a couple of weeks, using bits and pieces they find in his lab, [-X Sorry but I don't buy it. [-(

I also didn't like the way Christopher Priest made the bipedal Martians so humanoide, just so our heroes could blend in on Mars, That wasn't how Wells described them.
Author:  McTodd [ Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:07 pm ]
Post subject: 
I've just gone through one of the links I posted and now realise that the links I had in turn included within that ancient thread are dead - that is, the ones to an online repository of the entire Cosmopolitan serialisation (which I understand to have been more or less identical to the Pearson's) that used to be hosted on a US university site. Shame...

By the way, this link...

http://www.angelfire.com/nb/classillus/images/war/worlds.html

...was mentioned on the old WOTWonline link I posted in an earlier message here as being the Pearson's serialisation - it isn't, it's the book but including scans of Goble's illustrations (probably, to judge by their relative murkiness, scanned from the Castle Books facsimile reprint, 'The Collector's Book of...' etc.).

Morrisvan: I too have read the 'Scarlet Traces' series, and thoroughly enjoyed them. As to whether the Martians were the ghastly would-be shapechangers of 'The Great Game', I don't know, I felt that was maybe stretching it and it all got a bit rushed toward the end, but that's just me. I quite like Priest's speculation that they were the superbrainy would-be solution to their planet's environmental decline, developed by the humanoids.

Lonesome: You could argue that the Time Traveller only spent years developing his first machine because he had to develop the theory first, and prototypes always take longer to develop than production models. Okay, so a couple of weeks might be pushing it, but he did have his lab after all, and had already developed both the theory and technique with his forst machine. As for the humanoids, yes, they depart quite a lot from Wells's description, but it could be argued that what were found in Wells's novel were such dessicated remains, that when alive they might have been more human-like. After all, a mummy is a very different thing from a living person... But mainly I think Priest probably felt it was easier to empathise with more humanoid characters, plus I should imagine he was taking Wells's Narrator's speculation - that the Martians were the end result of evolution from creatures that may have been like us - and giving it a twist.

But I found the most enjoyable speculation on the Martians' true nature and motives to have been a short story presented in the style of a discursive article called 'Just who were those Martians anyway?' by Lawrence Watt-Evans, and published in the anthology 'War of the Worlds: Fresh Perspectives'.
Author:  Lonesome Crow [ Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:11 pm ]
Post subject: 
I see what you are saying McTodd and I did enjoy The Space Machine I just felt the last few chapters were rushed

In the Time Machine the narrator says his departure was delayed because one of the crystal rod for the machine was two inches too short and he had to get a new rod cut. yet these three people manage to find enough spare parts to make a working machine with very little trouble.

Yes I agree a mummy is a very different thing from a living person, but a mummy still has joints in His/Her limbs, but Wells described his Bipedal Martians as having no bones , only a sponge like skeleton which probably wouldn't need joints and would probably look very different from us.

I feel with a little more work Priest could have smoothed these out and made the story a little more convincing.
Author:  McTodd [ Wed Jan 31, 2007 12:40 am ]
Post subject: 
Lonesome Crow wrote:
...Wells described his Bipedal Martians as having no bones , only a sponge like skeleton which probably wouldn't need joints and would probably look very different from us.

Not quite, what Wells said was:

These creatures, to judge from the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands, were bipeds with flimsy, siliceous skeletons (almost like those of the siliceous sponges) and feeble musculature, standing about six feet high and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. Two or three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and all were killed before earth was reached. It was just as well for them, for the mere attempt to stand upright upon our planet would have broken every bone in their bodies.

The reference to 'bones' does imply joints, and that those bones simply consisted of a different material from that of ours (silica as opposed to calcium). The reference to 'flinty sockets' also implies a skeletal substance based on silica. Now, the use of the word 'sponge' is misleading, because it implies the soft, squashy things we use in the bath, but siliceous sponges are not the same as bath sponges, and are never used for that purpose as they are too harsh. A bit of surfing reveals that there are two groups of siliceous sponge that have rigid skeletons, so again, it has to be emphasised that 'sponge' can be misleading.

At the end of the day, opinions are subjective so nothing is gainsaid by my trying to impose my opinion, which would be stupid! But I did want to just point out that Wells's description can't be taken for granted...
Author:  Lonesome Crow [ Wed Jan 31, 2007 8:20 pm ]
Post subject: 
:D OK, I admit when I am defeated, You are right I had imagined a soft sponge-like skeleton and had forgotten the reference to 'breaking every bone in their bodies.' #-o
Author:  morrisvan [ Sun Feb 04, 2007 6:18 pm ]
Post subject: 
Oh dear, I do seem to have put the human among the Martians.

The reason why I brought it up was that in "The Space Machine" the Martians don't give Edward and Amelia a second glance when they among the humanoid slaves. As long as they are bipedal then it dosen't matter where they came from. Also as well as the slaves brought in the cylinders for food, there were also two to pilot the cylinder which is how Edward and Amelia get back to Earth by changing places with its crew. During the flight the Martians were sedated so they needed two humanoids to fly the cylinder, and presumably they would be of a higher intelligence than the ordinary slaves. Another scene from the novel is where Edward sees both Martians and humanoids working alongside with no slavery enforced. This led me to wonder whether the Martians intended to weed out humans who were more intellgent to have them work alongside them and use the rest for food and slave labour.

Also I'm reading "The Martian War" at the moment and without giving too much away there's a scene where Wells and Jane are enslaved by the Martians.

As for The Space Machine, I guess that that Time Traveller would have had a supply of spare parts made for his Time Machine; he probably had some in his knapsack when he left on his final voyage. So that's why Edward and Amelia were able to knock one up so quickly and they also had the plans to hand. Another reason for their haste was the need to hit back at the Martians as quickly as possible. Their hit and run attacks on the Martians are memorable and other favourite parts of the novel are their first arrival on Mars, their flight home in the cylinder and the scene of them rowing along the river, trying to keep ahead of the Martians and witnessing the evacuation of London.
Author:  Loz [ Sun Feb 04, 2007 9:02 pm ]
Post subject: 
I always felt the Martians only wanted us for food. they were so vastly superior that they saw us as insects; tasty insects. Their handling machines would far exceed anything we could do for them on a physical level. What the artillary man suggests is only conjecture on his part, as a man tries to humanise another species.
Author:  Lonesome Crow [ Mon Feb 05, 2007 8:51 pm ]
Post subject: 
It's been a few years since I read 'The Space Machine' but if I remember rightly, one of our heroes Edward or Amelia, I think it was Amelia, falls sick and this spreads to the Martians and is probably why only ten cylinders were fired off.
I can't remember whether this actually happened or whether this is what I thought should have happened :-k can anyone enlighten me?

My favorite scenes in 'The Space Machine' are when they first land on Mars they land in a Red Weed grove and loose the space machine, The scene where they see their first Tripods and think they are stationary watch towers, because the machine's leg are drawn together to form a central column and the scene where Edward attacks and kills the Martian in the Tripod's Hood.
Author:  morrisvan [ Tue Feb 06, 2007 11:59 pm ]
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In "The Space Machine" it is Amelia who leads a revolution aganst the Martians as she and Edward are seen as legendary saviours who will rescue the humanoids from slavery. This is proved after Edward kills the Martian in it's tripod. The reason why no more cylinders are fired after the tenth is that the humanoids gain control of the launch site. Amelia develops a close bond with the humanoids and Edward notices her divided loyalities on their return to Earth.
Author:  Lonesome Crow [ Wed Feb 07, 2007 10:01 pm ]
Post subject: 
Yes, it's all coming back to me now, Cheers morrisvan :D
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