ATTN War of the Worlds fans

Just wondering if anyone else here is as obsessed with Wells' masterpiece as I am.

Basically a silly idea is forming in my head. On the Friday of the Wembley gig, I might just get my arse out of bed early and get a train to Woking, visit Horsell common, then return by train, which will more or less follow the Martian advance up the Thames Valley into London.

Anyone wanna come out and play?

I mean it's either that or all day boozing.

Boozing sounds cool.

Not a lot will be happening on Horsell Common, unless you are into dogging.

Hubby has the original music on vinyl, the one where Richard Burton is the narrator. The music is brilliant but it used to scare the shit out of the kids when they were younger :D

Dr. Cambo, what'd you think of the movie "Signs"? Pretty blatant steal from War of the Worlds, I thought, but on a more personal scale than global...and er...more religious.

Signs? Hmmmmm Seen it, not sure I catch the WOTW rip off though. Unless you mean the bare fact of it containing aliens, an invention of Wells' masterpiece.

BTW, I have a special edition of the musical, and on the extra CD's it contains all the dialogue Burton and Essex recorded....it's SO much more than the tiny amount used on the record, it's damned near half the book. Hopefully they will use some of it in next year's Jeff Wayne CGI movie......which given the several offensive attempts at a movie version last year, might just be te best movie version ever....even though it differs from the "True Story" in a number of ways, as has been pointed out, it captures the atmosphere PERFECTLY ( well the album on which the movie will be based does).

I encountered the album first, age 12, in my dad's car...the first thing I heard was the artilleryman saying "got to report to headquaters, if there's anything left of it" followed by the destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton. But what scared the livig pish out of me more than anything was that 2nd epilogue with NASA losing contact with the Viking landers and seeing the flare coming towards us, and all the radio circuits going dead.

That prompted me to read the book.....WOW, I have never encoutered another book so deepy involved with the details of such things. With it being the first invasion story it does make all subsequent invasions look sad. If you have never read it....READ IT! it's very short. I am currently listening to the libravox audiobook.....available free of charge from libravox.org.

Have not read the book. Saw the original movie. Boycotted the Tom Cruise version.

Doctor? wrote: Signs? Hmmmmm Seen it, not sure I catch the WOTW rip off though. Unless you mean the bare fact of it containing aliens, an invention of Wells' masterpiece.

I was thinking more along the lines of how the supposedly super-intelligent aliens seem to overlook little things that can destroy them, like...um...microbes (in WOTW) and water (in Signs).

For my monies, the Orson Welles/Mercury Theatre version is the tops. Saw the Tom Cruise thing as part of a drive-in double feature...the piece of shit bored me half to tears. Where was the fucking plot of that thing? It was just a lot of explosions and running. Should've gone straight to video. At least it let Spielberg make something riskier like Munich, which I liked a lot as a spy movie, ignoring all the Jewishness.

Had a copy of WOTW Orson Wells' version on cassette when I was kid, of the original recording. It was really fun and scary to listen to in the dark. It's a great get-away since everything has to be visual and constantly moving/exploding for today's entertainment.....and then a decade ago people want to act as if they invented reality TV.

I'll be honest though, I didn't know it was a book...thought it was only the radio broadcast and two movies (which the last was such crap). I'll have topick up the book.

Are you a fan of Time Machine as well? Didn't that come out with a remake recently?

Twas indeed a book, and published in 1898 and all.

Love the time machine....after all...no Time Machine, no Dr Who.

However, mention not the remake...I'll kill the bugger that made that once I've finished with Cruise.

Actually 3 versions of WOTW came out in 2005.....the Tom Cruise one....one starring C Thomas Howell (which featured TRIPODS with 6 legs LOL)and one made by Pendragon productions which followed the book to the letter. Sadly it was made by idiots using a Sinclair Spectrum for CGI effects. I was baffled at how bad it was given that it was book-based (mobile phone masts in the background and everything). So the best hope is for Jeff Waynes 2 hour music video due out in 2007.

I must admit I LOVE the Orson Welles production, it so perfectly captures the fear, terror even, of our society getting a bit of it's own back. Never figured out how anyone took it for real though....in 20 mins the Martians make it from Grover's Mill NJ to NYC, and take out the whole US Army and Army air corps (there was no USAF in 1938 right?). Lover the 1953 George Pal movie too, although it bears little or no relation to WOTW, it is a great film in it's own right....and the effects are every bit as good as anything you will see in a film made this year.

I've always fancied seeing the country where the original martians destroyed Victorian Engerland ....so I was thinking, Maybe October would be a good opportunity.

The audiobook is Here should anyone wish to plug this gap in their literary life.

If this doesn't sell anyone on it, I dunno.....

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

I have the fourth edition (1922) of his "The Outline of History" which is four volumes. Not sure if you've ever read this (and I don't think it's in print for quite sometime now), but it is amazing. I read the first two books, but then life got in my way and I kind of forgot about them in the shuffle....thanks for bringing Wells up, now I think I'll have to sit down and finish the other two volumes.

Most people see him as a fiction writer, but he really changed the way history books are written, and a bit different hearing his perspective on Human struggle, vs. the kingdom/war type history we are used to. Amazing stuff.

Doctor? wrote:

Unless you mean the bare fact of it containing aliens, an invention of Wells' masterpiece.

h g wells invented the concept of aliens? kewl.

empire gave away a cassette recording of the original radio broadcast on cassette a few years back, have it lying around somewhere at home

Its been done to death,nearly every sci-fi film is a different take on it. Ill skip the new version,weve only just had the Spielberg one.

hibster wrote:

Doctor? wrote:

Unless you mean the bare fact of it containing aliens, an invention of Wells' masterpiece.

h g wells invented the concept of aliens? kewl.

empire gave away a cassette recording of the original radio broadcast on cassette a few years back, have it lying around somewhere at home

Tis good, but as an Engerlander.....get the audio book for sod all ( legally, it's public domain) from the link above.

As for Aliens...wellll hmmm, yes and no there were moon creatures in much earlier books, and life on the plantes had been discussed....but The alien race as invader or intelligent, completely unearthly life and as opponent of, and metaphore for, man....yup.

Anyway, this is all well and good, but I can see I will be either doing my little pilgrimage alone....or sitting in a pub with you sods all day

El Jarvo wrote:

Burt Reynolds wrote: Boozing sounds cool.

Not a lot will be happening on Horsell Common, unless you are into dogging.

Horsell Common it is then!

Scarier than any martian invasion!! Cambo will shit himself if he bumps into this particular randy gent. "Do you want to see my death ray?". Oo-er.

Doctor? wrote: Just wondering if anyone else here is as obsessed with Wells' masterpiece as I am.

Basically a silly idea is forming in my head. On the Friday of the Wembley gig, I might just get my arse out of bed early and get a train to Woking, visit Horsell common, then return by train, which will more or less follow the Martian advance up the Thames Valley into London.

Anyone wanna come out and play?

I mean it's either that or all day boozing.

You ARE joking??

LOL

I take it I should consider that a 3 line whip then?

Doctor? wrote:

Anyway, this is all well and good, but I can see I will be either doing my little pilgrimage alone....or sitting in a pub with you sods all day

If I could drive to London, I'd join you.

loved the hg wells adaptions as a kid, ie: wotw and time machine ect. thought the cruise /speilberg version was appaling and they had obviously been playing the "half life 2" computer game , as some of the scenes in it are a direct port. i was once told that the book wotw was meant to be a trilogy,as in the aliens doing things in threes,very clever i thought. is this true?? i also remember years ago the bbc having a wack at it with a series called "the tripods",which picked up on events after the invasion. i quite got into it but then it just stopped. just goes to show tha h.g.wells was way ahead of his time as far as this genre of writing goes,many say he invented it. and looking back some of the best sci-fi ever written was done so at the early part of the last century. oh and heres a question for the doc,did h.g.wells write "first men in the moon" or am i going mental. that was a fun film for me as a kid.

mike powell wrote: oh and heres a question for the doc,did h.g.wells write "first men in the moon" or am i going mental. that was a fun film for me as a kid.

Yes, he wrote that.

Yup Wells wrote "first men in the moon".

I dunno about WOTW as a trilogy, it was originally a serial written for a London paper, sort of a "war diary". There IS a short story by Wells called "The Crystal Egg" which revolves around the finding of an object that works as a remote video link (as we would call it) to Mars, through which , what are cearly the Martians of WOTW are observed in their daily lives. The "doing things in threes", is a huge extrapolation on the part of the George Pal movie and the spun off TV show (both great stuff, just sod all to do with Wells), it appears to be based on the bare fact of the the initial "beachead" consisting of the 3 cylinders which fell in close proxymity at Horsell, Byfleet golf course and Pyrford.

"The Tripods" was adapted from a trilogy by John Christopher, and yeah, I always took it as "what would have happened if the Martians had won" [1]. The BBC (and 7 network Australia) made the first two books, "the white mountains" and "the city of gold and lead", the third book "the pool pf fire" was never filmed. It featured a return trip to the city of the Masters, this time to attempt to destroy the motherfuckers.

I can see, that given that horsell common seems to have become less related to the red star of war and more to the brown star of rampant poovery, my choise is get buggered, or sit in a pub and get buggered up. Mine's a double TVR!!!!!!

I may instead take a quick tube trip to Primrose Hill, since that's where their main base was, where they were building their flying machine and stuff...tho I suppose All will tell me that Primrose Hill is now an open air heroin addict farm or something

Actually, those chaps in Al's nice picture could well be off to the Thames valley to be BBQ'd/gassed/smashed to a pulp on a treetrunk...well maybe not, When did the British army start wearing Khaki?

[1] It bugs me to hear SO many smart arses decry Wells' ending..."blah blah blah....human disease would be harmless to Martians yadda yadda yadda"...not ONE of the fuckers has read the book it seems. Wells is CRYSTAL clear that they die because they have no defense against the perfectly ordinary bacteria we carry round in our guts and blood and skin, the stuff our imune system holds in check while we live, but which causes rotting when we snuff it. The Martians rotted in their machines, rotted alive, never knew what hit them.

Doctor? wrote: Yup Wells wrote "first men in the moon".

[1] It bugs me to hear SO many smart arses decry Wells' ending..."blah blah blah....human disease would be harmless to Martians yadda yadda yadda"...not ONE of the fuckers has read the book it seems. Wells is CRYSTAL clear that they die because they have no defense against the perfectly ordinary bacteria we carry round in our guts and blood and skin, the stuff our imune system holds in check while we live, but which causes rotting when we snuff it. The Martians rotted in their machines, rotted alive, never knew what hit them.

What about Jules Verne? Didn't he write some moon story, or have I been huffing too much gas?

Second, does it really make much difference HOW the aliens die from said bacteria, when if they're really so smart, shouldn't they have known about the existence of such bacteria ahead of time?

Also, did the aliens expect to be greeted as liberators?

His Holiness, The Pope wrote:

Doctor? wrote: Yup Wells wrote "first men in the moon".

[1] It bugs me to hear SO many smart arses decry Wells' ending..."blah blah blah....human disease would be harmless to Martians yadda yadda yadda"...not ONE of the fuckers has read the book it seems. Wells is CRYSTAL clear that they die because they have no defense against the perfectly ordinary bacteria we carry round in our guts and blood and skin, the stuff our imune system holds in check while we live, but which causes rotting when we snuff it. The Martians rotted in their machines, rotted alive, never knew what hit them.

What about Jules Verne? Didn't he write some moon story, or have I been huffing too much gas?

Second, does it really make much difference HOW the aliens die from said bacteria, when if they're really so smart, shouldn't they have known about the existence of such bacteria ahead of time?

Also, did the aliens expect to be greeted as liberators?

Yes, Verne wrote "from the earth to the moon". And to this day, spacecraft carry "vernier thrusters" in his honor!

As for the Martians and bacteria...their telescopes were good, but not THAT good.

I think the Martians were less delusional than Yanks, and didn;t try to pull the "we're here to help you" crap on people who's blood they were draining. However Fox News reported that the black smoke was actually rose petal vapour and that the purpose of the heat ray was to start fires to help poor, cold humans.

Make it the day before the Wembley gig and pub crawl back from Woking and I might just be interested... Noone could have belived that in the last days before NO played Wembley...

Snorri xxx

The summer sun is fading as the year grows old and darker days are drawing near The winter winds will be much colder Now New Order won't be here.....

(off to watch the birds fly south...)

spacejunk wrote: The summer sun is fading as the year grows old and darker days are drawing near The winter winds will be much colder Now New Order won't be here.....

(off to watch the birds fly south...)

Nice try, but isn't it spring in Melbourne ;)

BTW, I am astonished that all through this thread and even considering some of the content.......no one has made any really dodgy tripod gags LOL.

Doctor? wrote:

spacejunk wrote: The summer sun is fading as the year grows old and darker days are drawing near The winter winds will be much colder Now New Order won't be here.....

(off to watch the birds fly south...)

Nice try, but isn't it spring in Melbourne ;)

BTW, I am astonished that all through this thread and even considering some of the content.......no one has made any really dodgy tripod gags LOL.

Whip out my third member, lean on it....does that make me an alien?

EdelBrock wrote: Whip out my third member, lean on it....does that make me an alien?

Na... a midget, and you'll fall over.

Happy B'day btw..

El Jarvo wrote:

Doctor? wrote: I may instead take a quick tube trip to Primrose Hill, since that's where their main base was, where they were building their flying machine and stuff...tho I suppose All will tell me that Primrose Hill is now an open air heroin addict farm or something

You don't take tube trips to Primrose Hill.

If, as I presume most of us will be doing (certainly spoken to a couple here about venues), we'll be massing around Baker Street, then the Hill is but a stone's throw behind it.

Now you tell him Al..Cambiosa's gone and got his Gaytrain ticket already

El Jarvo wrote:

Doctor? wrote: I may instead take a quick tube trip to Primrose Hill, since that's where their main base was, where they were building their flying machine and stuff...tho I suppose All will tell me that Primrose Hill is now an open air heroin addict farm or something

You don't take tube trips to Primrose Hill.

If, as I presume most of us will be doing (certainly spoken to a couple here about venues), we'll be massing around Baker Street, then the Hill is but a stone's throw behind it.

Cool, thanks Al. I can avoid von bumbandit's express then ;)

Staying just off Euston road, itself a landmark ("there were a dozen dead bodies in the Euston road, their outlines softenned by the black dust.....")

My little pilgrimage, I should explain, was more about seeing the lie of the land, than any fan-boy reasoning. The idea was that, when next I read the book, I would KNOW what the confluence of the Thames and Wey looked like etc. The thing I really wanted a good mental picture of was the country just Londonward of Weybridge and Shepperton, where the Martians formed their crescent of 12 tripods before marching on the prepared gun positions in the hills towards Kew and Richmond (and gassing them). There is something really compelling to me about that scene......the 3 fighting machines coming out, the others joining them, the handing out of tubes, the heavy booms of the tubes as they fire, the mysterious black hills appearing across the landscape, and finally the Martians rolling forward in the last of twilight.....the eve of the extermination of London.