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 Post subject: When did "The War of the Worlds" Take Place?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 12:08 am 
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Does anyone have a definite idea as to when WoTW took place. Everyone assumes it is set in the late 1890s when Wells wrote the novel, and both the Dark Horses adaptation and sequels and volume 2 of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" give the date as 1898. However, Wells clearly states that the invasion took place "early in the twentieth century,". Christopher Priest in "The Space Machine" gives the exact date of
22nd June 1903 - the Sunday when the Martians launch their assault on London - and in the original release of Jeff Wayne's musical the date was given as 1904 - with 12th August when the Martian invasion is launched. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:09 pm 
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Martian War Lord

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This is a question we have tabled before, but with no satisfactory answer.
I personally think it's set in the early twentieth century, because Wells says in Chapter one "And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment." and a little later says "we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planet" Both these statements would suggest the story was written after the turn of the century.

A bit later on Wells says "The storm burst upon us six years ago now." So do we subtract six years from what we originally thought? which would set it back in the nineteenth century or do we imagine the journalist writing the story in 1910?, setting the story back to the beginning of the twentieth century? ](*,)

I think Wells was deliberately elusive as to the exact date.
What do you think?


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 10:59 pm 
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It's been common in sci-fi to set stories in the not too distant future. Orwell's "1984" is the best known example, and Jules Verne wrote "Paris in the Twentieth Century" around 1863 and it was left unpublished until the 1990s. The UNIT stories in "Doctor Who" were supposily set in the late 1970s/early 1980s and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" made in the 1960s was set ten years later. Going all the way back to the early 1800s Mary Shelley set her novel: "The Last Man" in the 21st Century.

I think Wells, while being vague about the date, was probably following the tradition but only going a few years to give WoTW it's immediacy. I agree the story is set in the early 1900s with 1903 being the definitive date (thanks to Christopher Priest) so the Narrator could be recounting the story in 1909. The early 1900s also qualify as the invasion could have taken place shortly after the Boer War ended in 1902. The British Army fared very badly in Africa which resulted in extensive reforms so that could explain their poor performance against the Martians.

I know the subject's been already covered, but had there been a Martian Invasion then it would have affected the whole of the twentieth century While some countries may have delighted in the British Empire getting a bloody nose there would also be widespread horror at the slaughter and the Martian atrocities, plus the fear of another attack. There would have been no world wars, no Russian Revolution or Nazism and the League of Nations/United Nations would have come into existence a lot earlier and would have worked better. Wells always argued for a world goverment and the possibility of another attack may well have brought one into exsitence.

Comments anyone?


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 11:57 pm 
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morrisvan wrote:
...had there been a Martian Invasion then it would have affected the whole of the twentieth century While some countries may have delighted in the British Empire getting a bloody nose there would also be widespread horror at the slaughter and the Martian atrocities, plus the fear of another attack. There would have been no world wars, no Russian Revolution or Nazism and the League of Nations/United Nations would have come into existence a lot earlier and would have worked better.

Or would human nature simply have reasserted itself, leading to a mad scramble by the Great Powers to exploit captured Martian technology in creating vastly more destructive weaponry, perhaps resulting in hugely more destructive and genocidal wars than actually did take place...?

Or perhaps the British would have exploited the Martian technology themselves, keeping it from others and using it to make her Empire totally unassailable, and perhaps even subjugating the rest of the world under her rule? One World State, to be sure, but a distinctly British World State...?


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PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 12:28 am 
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I don't think we'll ever be able to pin down a specific date. After all, we're talking about a war that never happened.

Want to see messed-up chronology? Check out the anthology "War of the Worlds: The Global Dispatches". One story has Teddy Roosevelt encountering a Martian in Cuba right after the charge up San Juan Hill, which took place in 1898 (like the entire Spanish-American War). Another story has the invasion taking place during the Boxer Rebellion in China, which makes it at least 1900 on the dot, while another shows Winston Churchill seeing Martians in South Africa while making his escape from captivity during the Second Boer War. Of course, given Wells' vagueness (no doubt deliberate) concerning the date, such discrepancies were inevitable.

Oh, and a world united against the Martians might not be so great. Early in the 20th Century, there was a story---can't remember the title or the author, unfortunately---covering this very subject. A group of scientists decided that the only way to create a one-world government and enforce universal peace was to whip up a bogus scare about a potential Martian invasion. The scare succeeded, and the governments of the world not only merged into one, but pooled their resources to create a gigantic cannon in the best tradition of Verne and Wells to bombard Mars in a preemptive strike. A few days later, there really IS a Martian invasion. It seems that unlike what the scientists thought, Mars really WAS inhabited, but they were perfectly willing to live in peace until those dastardly Earthlings started shelling them out of the blue for no apparent reason. Thus, the invasion, with the invaders no doubt chanting the Martian equivalent of "Remember Pearl Harbor!" or, for you Brits, "Remember Coventry!"


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PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 4:19 pm 
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Alland wrote:
Early in the 20th Century, there was a story---can't remember the title or the author, unfortunately---covering this very subject. A group of scientists decided that the only way to create a one-world government and enforce universal peace was to whip up a bogus scare about a potential Martian invasion. The scare succeeded, and the governments of the world not only merged into one, but pooled their resources to create a gigantic cannon in the best tradition of Verne and Wells to bombard Mars in a preemptive strike. A few days later, there really IS a Martian invasion. It seems that unlike what the scientists thought, Mars really WAS inhabited, but they were perfectly willing to live in peace until those dastardly Earthlings started shelling them out of the blue for no apparent reason. Thus, the invasion, with the invaders no doubt chanting the Martian equivalent of "Remember Pearl Harbor!" or, for you Brits, "Remember Coventry!"

I've read about that story too! Blimey, it must be real and I didn't dream it! I'll check out my books at home later, after the pub. Yeah, right...

As for the date, there was a big discussion on the other eveofthewar ages ago, with various of us flinging astronomical data about as well as minutely dissecting the text, and we still couldn't get much narrower than some time during 1901-1905:

http://forums.eveofthewar.com/showthread.php?t=3980

I also don't favour including the Boer War in the WOTW timeline. Wells doesn't mention it (of course, as it started 2 years after he wrote WOTW!), but if we are to accept the conceit that WOTW describes real events, and is written some years after the War, then the fact that the Boer War is never mentioned means we should place WOTW in an alternate timeline. Surely Wells's Narrator would have mentioned a major war that involved the British Army for the best part of 3 years?


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 10, 2007 9:19 pm 
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He does, but only in two of his other novels! There's a brief (and highly critical) mention of the Boer War in "In the Days of the Comet". Also, in the second half of "The Food of the Gods", a long-serving convict is released from prison to try and get accustomed to a world where "Boomfood" makes plants and animals (and people!) grow gigantic. During this brief section, there is mention of a bush grown to the size of a forest, with a squad of British infantry moving through it under cover, "taking advantage of the lessons learned in the Boer War".


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 7:13 pm 
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When I mentioned the Boer War, I wasn't trying to link WoTW with it, only to suggest the British Army's poor performance against the Martians was similar to their conflict with the Boers which led to extensive reforms in the army after the war ended in 1902.

I think we have an idea as to what the world would be like if the British kept the Martian tecnology for themselves in "Scarlet Traces." A totaltrian state with Oswald Mosley as Home Secretary, dissendents silenced and an unbridgeable gulf between the rich and poor which could be seen as taking Wells' pessimism to it's logical conculsion. The other scenario of world powers competing with one another for the technology leading to even bloodier wars isn't exactly uplifting either. You're probaby right in stating that mankind would learn nothing from the invasion. After 9/11, everyone was saying that the world had changed. Well, it hasn't. We seem to have forgotten those lessons and just as with the war on Mars we're involved in a bloody conflict in Iraq which seems to have no end. Who said that art imitates life. Could it be the other way round?

Incidentally a variation of that story can be seen in the original "Outer Limits" episode: "The Architects of Fear" with Robert Gulp as an idealistic scientist who has himself made up as a bug-eyed monster to frighten the world into peace, and gets shot by an irate duck hunter for his pains.


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 8:53 pm 
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morrisvan wrote:
When I mentioned the Boer War, I wasn't trying to link WoTW with it, only to suggest the British Army's poor performance against the Martians was similar to their conflict with the Boers which led to extensive reforms in the army after the war ended in 1902.

No worries, Morris, I wasn't saying you were incorporating the Boer War into the WOTW timeline, I only mentioned it because others have (such as in 'Global Dispatches') and I think that's mistaken. I agree with your point about the BW showing up the Army's poor performance in a similar way to Wells's Martian War.

Like you, I find the 'Scarlet Traces' scenario depressingly plausible. And as for 'uniting against a common enemy', we only have WW2 to look at, when the West allied with the USSR to fight the Nazis. At one point, Churchill, an implacable enemy of communism and one of the loudest voices behind the post-Great War expeditions to Russia to fight the Bolsheviks, said that if he had to, he would ally himself with the Devil and his satanic hordes to fight Hitler! And yet immediately after WW2, before the Americans had started to really worry about the Soviets, it was Churchill who coined the phrase 'Iron Curtain' and essentially declared the Cold War started. Now, one can argue over whether he helped usher in a period of tension that could have been avoided with the right policies, or whether he merely articulated sooner than anyone else what the realities of the world were, but the fact remains that the alliance against Germany fell apart pretty rapidly once the Nazi enemy was defeated.

That 'Outer Limits' episode sounds wonderful! I watched a lot of them when I was young, but that's one I don't remember.


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 1:46 am 
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But even when we do have a common enemy, we still fight amongst ourselves as pointed out in the Chapter 'The Man On Putney Hill' when the Journalist meets the Artilleryman there, there's very little cooperation between them, until each recognises the other, it's every man for himself or as Wells' put it "The strong survive and the weak go to the wall" [-( And I recon Wells got it about right.


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:55 pm 
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It's interesting to compare the narrator's skeptism of the Artilleryman's plans with that of Nicholson in the 1967 radio adaption of WoTW. Nicholson is quite enthusiastic about the Lieutenant's bid for survival that he puts forward ideas such as as raiding the British Library and storing the imporant books below ground.

The more I look at the post WoTW scenario the more depressing it gets. Mankind could just have locked away the technology and tried to carry on before the invasion. But there would still be the immense physical damage, and also the trauma of the survivors who would find it difficult or perhaps unable to come to terms with what they experienced. So it seems things would be no different and we would still have a twentieth century where fear and paranoia are still dominant.

Getting back to "The Architects of Fear" it was directed by Byron Haskin who also directed the 1953 version of WoTW. Haskin directed several episodes for "The Outer Limits" which included the eerie "A Feasbility Study", "The Invisible Enemy" (which was set on Mars and had monsters lurking beneath the sands) and the classic "Demon wth a Glass Hand."


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PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:17 am 
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Interesting debate. I'd say early 20th century maybe 1905 at most. and leave it at that. Wells would have wanted technology to be pretty much the same but maybe the Thunder Child is a futuristic ship.
As for the War's ramifications on human politics in the 20th century, it would have certainly changed things. I think The first and second world war probably would have been diverted and the Nuclear arms race quickened. And the space race too.
The Watchmen Graphic novel by Alan Moore who wrote League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, had an ending that ties in here. Once upon a time masked vigilante Adrien Veidt, who is like batman times ten, hoaxes an alien invasion, that wipes out New York. In the story Russia and America are close to Nuclear war, and everything is pessimistic, but the hoax, works and the war is avoided and new more optimistic time begins. One of the heroes in the book vows to expose the lie and the most powerful one disintegrates him to protect the lie.
It's the greatest graphic novel of all time.


Bah bah black sheap April diamond spheres, Rigsby, Rigsby, Eight sided Pears.


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