SF Review: The War of the Worlds revealed a weakness of mine. While reading I'm willing to give up science, logic, and rational thought. I enjoy the images of old SF stories (probably from Edgar Rice Burroughs) in which Mars was a rough, cold, and rocky planet of stern warriors and Venus a steamy, impenetrable jungle of silver-green beings, all mostly humanoid. Wells created some of these images, his ideas often being the foundation for later writings. Including, perhaps, the idea that any alien visitors ("extra-terrestrial" as Wells says) would be violent and bloodthirsty. The logic I'm so quick to ignore in my reading, however, suggests that any species that found our little planet would be so far beyond our science that hostility (and our defenses) would be irrelevant to them. The War of the Worlds is a classic, part of our shared cultural vocabulary as were other novels in his early run of significant works such as The Time Machine (1895) and The Invisible Man (1897). This novel contains an embarrassment of riches, by which I mean ideas. Wells touches on the barbarity of imperialism, the commonality of humankind, the destruction of the precious planet we've been given only to mock and destroy that gift, and the hubris with which we view the universe when we can't even lift ourselves much beyond our own neighborhood. At least The War of the Worlds doesn't express the arrogance of so much early American SF, actually demanded by John Campbell from his authors, that humanity stride fearlessly across the universe, when in fact any visitors could squash us like bugs. Accordingly, the title is something of a misnomer. Here humanity can offer so little resistance to the invaders that it was hardly a war, any more than the indigenous Tasmanians (as Wells notes) could offer the British. Among the technology Wells imagines here are poison gas, lasers, tanks, and flying machines. Survivalist attitudes rapidly spring up as in The Day of the Triffids (1951) and a host of today's post-apocalyptic dystopias. The geographical range of the "war" in Greater London and the Home Counties is described in native detail, which no doubt is immensely enjoyable for English readers, but anyone unfamiliar with London will be rapidly lost (my sense was that the hardy band was moving west when in fact they were moving east to embark for France). The black Penguin Classics edition of The War of the Worlds contains a couple of invaluable maps. This is at times a thoughtful work, embodying the futile hope that future humanity will stand together instead of being at each others throats. Unusually, it's written at an adult level. Although he writes fantasy, Wells always brings the story down to the level of the village and street, making it all seem (at least initially) genuine. He heightens the realism by emphasizing the ordinary, much as Spielberg likes to do. The reader is left with the image of shell-shocked survivors reeling from overwhelming loss and helplessness, only to awaken to a vanished threat through no action of their own, still scarred and damaged and too aware of what might've been. The hollow victory reflects no glory on humanity. At the same time Wells can get too caught up in the big picture. The protagonist expresses sorrow at the loss of his wife, but how much more real and credible his longing would be if he'd thought to mention her name. Wells also comments cuttingly on religion. When a curate panics at the destruction, a man asks: "What good is religion if it collapses under calamity?" Another comments: "Did you think God had exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent." Although effective, Wells' writing can be pedestrian and commonplace, more useful than awe-inspiring. But that's okay, in The War of the Worlds his ideas are more interesting than the transcription. [5★]
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