Bibliophiles of Loathing discussion

Classic Sci Fi for our reading pleasure!

Just an FYI, War of the Worlds is old enough to be in the public domain, so you can download it for free from amazon if you use some sort of kindle device, or from https://www.gutenberg.org/ in a variety of formats.

4/5 stars from me. Review to come when I have internet again, instead of just shitty phone internet.

---------------------------
Huzzah! Internet!

I was expecting this to be very dated and a little boring, but I think it holds its own against the more modern science fiction. Wells' first person telling of the story (and a second hand telling of the brothers experiences) is vivid and realistic. His use of actual locations and historical events adds to the realism of the story.
Had it not been for such references to modes of transport, various artillery and monetary values, this story could have taken place at any time.

I was a little disappointed at points, but those personal preferences and nothing against the writing.

I can now see why the radio drama caused such hysteria 40 years after it was published.

With books this old it is hard to tell how well they will age. This book first appeared in serialized form in 1987. For comparison the oldest human being alive today was born in 1898. That means no one living today was alive when it first appeared, which is crazy.

I was worried that with how much alien stuff exists in our world today this wouldn't hold up. I mean, we have Klingons, Xenomorphs, Predators, E.T.s, Wookies. Alien invasion stories are so old hat we have alien invasion COMEDIES! But I think the era it was written in may work to its favor. Though aspects of it certainly carried on (surely lasers are evolutions of heat-rays) a lot of it seems unique. Part of this was due to the sheer unknown. Putting yourself in the mindset of the narrator the sheer idea of Aliens are baffling. It is a new scary thing. Are they anything like us? Are they friendly? His thoughts about them are interesting. They are us, but better. To them we are rats, are cattle. They aren't evil aliens, so much as beings driven to survive, and perhaps in their way just as ignorant of our ways as we are of theirs. Just like now, our Sci-fi envisions aliens technologically superior to us as we are now, so to did they. But instead of being technologically past jet-fighters and nuclear warheads, they are more technologically advanced than ironclad ships and mortar shells.

Honestly, I was kind of surprised this predated any World Wars. surely the immense destruction could have easily been inspired by the horrors of those wars. Also the use of toxic gas by the aliens seems eerily similar to the use of mustard gas in WWI. While the heat-ray may have advanced to the laser in modern sci-fi, chemical warfare seems to have been abandoned, just like it has (more or less) in real life. I can understand why. It is overwhelming, it is depressing, there is little defense. Missiles and lasers look good on the big screen. Millions choking to death does not. But it worked in the story. It added to the dread. It gave the feeling that they could not be overcome. And indeed, if not for a flaw in their biology, they likely couldn't. In many ways this is a survival story, like modern zombie tales. Our protagonist doesn't, in fact can't, fight against the aliens. He simply must survive. It makes things gripping.

I'm sorry if my thoughts are a little all over the place, it's hard to keep my mind focused on particular parts. But basically, I really liked the the invasion part. I didn't care as much for the part where they were trapped in the house. His conversation with the artillery man about the potential future of mankind was pretty interesting. The ending was fine. I didn't expect them to fight their way out, that was made pretty clearly impossible.

Oh, also I found it funny that the place aliens would invade first would be Great Britain. I guess it is smallish so they could take it over and get their shit together? I just figured they'd go for a bigger land mass.

Anyway, a couple interesting things I found when looking at wikipedia. Someone basically stole the book and tweaked a few things so it was set in America. Copyright laws at the time sucked so it was perfectly legal. This guy also wrote a sequel called "Edison's Conquest of Mars" where Thomas Freakin' Edison leads an invasion of Mars as a counter attack. Crazy!

Anyway, I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars. I was pleasantly surprised.

Well, a bit late, but whatever.

I found two aspects interesting. One being that the story is told in the past tense, therefore giving away the ending before the story has begun in a sense, the other being certain parallels with the movie Signs.

The first point is just a personal preference, that I don't like stories told in the past tense or written as memoirs, because it ruins any suspense one has as to the fate of the protagonist. If they're writing a memoir, then obviously they survive, so any scenes where they are in mortal peril are rendered ineffective. I look forward to someone playing with that, by making the memoir written by a ghost, or switching view points part way through, cause the memoir (or it would have to be journal) writer dies, and someone else finishes the quest or some such. /rant.

As for the second point, it mainly stems from the ultimate ending of the Martians, that they come down and are defeated by a feature of the world that they were unprepared for. Here it is bacteria, and in Signs, it is water. Ignoring the fact that Signs is, on it's face, dumb, there's a parallel, that it isn't really humanity who beats the aliens, but the aliens themselves for making a huge mistake. The aliens could perhaps be forgiven for not understanding the world they were invading, but in either case, with such advanced technology, how would they fail to learn of these things?

Ooh, just thought of another (funny) similarity: Independence Day. They win by deactivating the shields of the enemy ships with a virus. It's probably a coincidence, but I choose to instead believe it was an intentional homage to this book, thereby making Independence day a superior film with cheeky references to it's forerunners.

So, it was a good book, that while I wouldn't recommend to a new reader, I would say holds up well despite it's age, and would be a good read for anyone big into sci-fi, because you gotta know your roots.