Reflection: War of the Worlds

In the autumn of 1883, H.G. Wells enrolled into the Royal College of Science in South Kensington, London. Previously enrolled in what he considered simplistic trade schools, this was Wells's first outing into academia. A year later, Wells became a student of biology under Thomas Henry Huxley, renowned Darwinist and rabid supporter of his own mentor, Charles Darwin. Undoubtedly, being a student under Huxley played a role in Wells's own science fiction works. In War of the Worlds, it enabled him to give almost lab-report like summaries and descriptions of Martian biology and behavior. However, beyond just giving Wells an edge on the description of his own inventions, Huxley's ravenous belief in Darwinism inflicted upon Wells a deep sense of the process of natural selection. The 19th century was also the era of social Darwinism, in which Darwin's principle of natural selection was pressed upon members of society in a "survival of the fittest man". According to this belief, those who were strong minded and strong willed were destined to rise above the destitute and ill-willed. This sense of social Darwinism pervades within War of the Worlds, pushing Wells's writing beyond simple scientific descriptions of natural selection into realms of social Darwinistic acts befalling characters. Within his writing, one primary characters display Wells's application of natural selection to humanity: the curate.

The Curate

The curate within Wells's world presents a look into Wells's interpretation of religion. While in general a vague character (we never really find out any details as to his exact position in pre-Martian English society), the narrator spends a great deal of the book living alongside the curate. First impressions for the narrator do not go well - the curate cannot hold his own in the world, and makes no effort to sustain himself against the Martians. The narrator takes it upon himself to rescue the curate from the roadside, but is quickly trapped for 2 weeks with the man when the fifth cylinder crashes in the vicinity of the house they hide within. During this time the curate suffers wild mood swings, between claims that God has forsaken humanity, to arguing about the little food left within the house for them to share (often hoarding the food and exponentially over-eating). For all intents and purposes, the reader is made away that during this period, the curate stays alive only due to the actions of the narrator. But the narrator is hardly benevolent. The narrator is not ignorant of these harsh actions - in fact, he calls upon the reader to forgive his rash behavior and struggles with the curate. As the weeks go by, the narrator finds himself getting into physical conflict with the curate. Perhaps these physical tests of strength between the two characters is one of the clearest examples of Wells's writings reflecting social Darwinism. Just as two animals fight over food and survival against the greater threat of predators, so does the narrator and the curate wrestle one another to exhaustion. The fighting between the two characters culminates eventually in the narrator's attempted murder of the curate with the hilt of a kitchen knife, thwarted at the last second by the abduction of the curate by the neighboring Martians. While the narrator did treat the curate harshly, Wells clearly exposes the narrator as the stronger willed and stronger built of the two men. In essence, the lack of consequences against the narrator, and in fact his continued survival, seems almost a implicit endorsement of the narrator's prowess, and therefore, an endorsement of the process of natural selection applied to man.

Reflection: War of the Worlds class

It's a little odd, and perhaps slightly funny, that my thoughts on Anglocentric science fiction inevitably fall back to Doctor Who. But I thought a great deal about it during our discussion of War of the Worlds, particularly regarding the question of which race, the humans or the Martians, were more monstrous, analytical, etc. There is an episode of the Doctor Who revival entitled "The Christmas Invasion," during which an alien race named the Sycorax appears in an organic-looking ship above the surface of the planet Earth on Christmas Eve. Of course, as it is Doctor Who, the British are the very first to come into contact with this alien race, who holds one third of the world hostage, poised on the roofs by virtue of something called "blood control."

What is really, genuinely interesting, however, is that, at the culmination of this episode is xenocide. The Doctor, the Time Lord defender of Earth (and more particularly, Great Britain), has defeated the Sycorax in honorable combat, and they have agreed to leave. The Prime Minister has other plans, and gives the orders for their wholesale destruction, blasting the alien ship out of the sky under the excuse of planetary defense. The first, definitive alien contact, broadcast across the entire world, ends with that race's elimination. Mind you, in much the same way that, in War of the Worlds, the Martians start by killing off people, so do the Sycorax. They have, however, by the end of the episode reached enough of an impasse to agree to leave, and never return. It is the Doctor himself who pinpoints the terrifying problem of humanity's obsession with its own survival: "I gave them the wrong warning. I should have told them to run, as fast as they can. Run and hide, because the monsters are coming - the human race."

The Martians in War of the Worlds are defeated in much the same way as the Native Americans of Latin America were in the 1500s, through diseases to which they have no immunity. And yet the humans take this victory into themselves, the very fact of their survival seen as triumph. Throughout the book there is this sense of the Martians versus humanity, and when the Martians are dead humanity seems to glory in its own survival. "By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth," the narrator says, "and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain." This passage shows, in my mind, the same dangerous ethnocentric tendency that forces Doctor Who's Prime Minister to destroy the Sycorax: humanity above all else, and the destruction of a species reckoned less than the survival of our own.

A reflection on the resistance question

Yesterday I was greatly disappointed when class ended and our discussion could not continue or branch out onto other subjects. One comment I wanted to make in class was that there is a scene in the first Terminator film that almost seems to directly challenge the artilleryman’s resistance plan. In this scene the protagonist returns from fighting cold and ruthless machines to a dingy sewer like bunker. Unlike the artilleryman’s hypothetical sewer, however, the sewer in the film is filled with the old, the desperate and mischievous children. The women that the protagonist encounters in the sewer and in battle are portrayed as heroic warriors rather than the fragile creatures that the artilleryman makes many women out to be. I believe the way Cameron filmed this scene was to show that humans have an inner strength and common bond, and this is what makes them unique and strong. If the Resistance was cold and rational, they would shun all those who couldn’t serve and were a waste of resources. However, it does not. If the Resistance had, it would be no different than the machines. The same would go for the artilleryman’s resistance. Should it have cast out the “unfit” and let the Martians slay innocent people as an act of appeasement, it would be just as ruthless as the Martians. In the Terminator series, it is through unity, ingenuity and bravery that the humans finally defeat the machines. This is a reflection of the human condition: with a capacity for evil and self preservation humans also have a capacity for love and selflessness. In the end, who would you rather be with: the artilleryman’s emotionless resistance or the Thunder Child’s selfless crew that destroyed two Martian tripods and saved countless lives?

Substantive on "The War of the Worlds"

Although to some The War of the Worlds brings with it the image of a campy alien invasion or B rated horror, Wells’ novel is deserving of the title of classic and is flooded with sociopolitical commentary. For one, the novel reflects Darwinian ideas that were controversial during the era the novel was written. This is seen when both the red weed and the Martians succumb to Earth’s microscopic organisms, as well as when the red weed smothers and overtakes much of the plant life it encounters as it has no natural competitors. Wells’ most poignant praise of Darwinism is when he states that humanity had earned its’ command over earth with the billions of lives lost to diseases and sicknesses. He also suggests that the Martians have existed longer than humans and therefore have more evolved intellects. In this way Wells is using science fiction to mask his support for Darwinism, which at the time was anathema to Victorian society and Christianity. Besides this, Wells uses his novel to reflect growing concerns of war in Europe by using the Martian invasion as an allegory for an invasion by another European foe. Perhaps the coldness and inhumanity of the Martians makes The War of the Worlds a piece of propaganda in a sense.
The way the narrator describes the “vastness” and “coolness” of the Martian intellect in The War of the Worlds leads to the question of what future mentalities will be characterized by. Will future thought processes entail a Vulcan like stoicism and be characterized by cold rationality, or are empathy and caring necessary for a civilization to advance? On the other hand, could an ideal mentality be prescribed to another species? Could certain concepts even be understood between different species? For example, would a welfare state work for the Martians that must feed off other creatures and reproduce like plants? Would the idea of “right to life” be an alien concept to certain extraterrestrials? Such conundrums led to the question of what interspecies diplomacy will entail and whether or not a failure to communicate will lead to future wars between worlds.

Substantive: War of the Worlds

Wells' War of the Worlds marks the early age of science fiction. In his time, Wells' only true contemporary was an aging Jules Verne. Even so, Wells wrote only a limited selection of science fiction, focusing on the genre only in his early career. But while Wells, perhaps unintentionally, became known as a timeless author, his works show a clear reflection of the era they were written in. The value of this particular tale lies in Wells' dedication to his realistic created scenario, and the applicability of the themes drawn from this created "disaster of all disasters".

War of the Worlds and Colonialism

War of the Worlds may seem to immediately strike the reader as pure invasion literature. Aliens invade and figuratively (and literally) stomp on humanity, creating a story rife with possibilities. The entertainment value from such a story is no doubt high, but if prompted, Wells' story offers up plenty fine points for the reader to chew on far after the Martians succumb to their inevitable end. Of course the most notable point of the plot is its setting. Wells, drawing from his own current residence, set the Martian invasion in what would be at the time "suburban" England. His characters darted around streets that he knew himself. But besides making this a personal narrative, Wells' choice of England as the site for invasion rings of a certain karma at work. With respect to the work's timing, War of the Worlds is written just before the turn of the 19th century, a century which, among other things, was the hey-day of British colonialism. It's difficult to avoid drawing a clear line from the atrocities committed upon the colonies of Britian by the British army to the atrocities committed by the Martians upon the English people. While I don't believe Wells reveled in the thought of his own people dying and suffering under the Martians, his characterization of the people of the countryside and the Martians certainly withstand comparison to actions they might have taken faced with native peoples. This kind of characterization is found throughout the first portion of the story, before the Martians begin wrecking havoc upon the country, where men and women from around the country side come visit the first Martian cylinder. In general, those visiting treat the object with disrespect, going as far as setting up food stands next to the crash site. One can imagine the same actions witnessed on the shores of Africa, with well-to-do citizens making a show out of the local natives. But Wells takes this and flips the scenario completely on the head - the Martians begin subjugating those who have done the subjugation. Again, this rings of a certain "divine retribution". Wells very well could have allowed other cylinders to fall across the globe and still have written the exact same novel. But he very specifically withheld invasion from the rest of the world, instead choosing for the Martians to only attack England. Certainly other countries at the time were just as guilty of rampant colonialism, but perhaps the actions of Great Britain were close and most easily drawn upon for Wells. Regardless, Wells effectively plays his plot out in a way which reflects the actions of colonial Britain back upon itself.

War of the Worlds and the Horror of Warfare

Although his main character is never named, the narrator of War of the Worlds tells his tale through very personal journalistic prose, as if writing the story for a local newspaper. Wells himself at the time had very similar inclinations to his narrator, as he often wrote accessible scientific and journalism pieces himself during this time. The style chosen for War of the Worlds, although somewhat lacking the passion of a direct first person experience (the story is a retelling of the events), emphasizes the realness and aids the reader in suspension of disbelief. Perhaps it is this style that made Wells' story so easily converted into a radio drama which shocked the US in 1938. But it was the realistic horror of war, and the description of the burnt landscape of the English country side, that truly marks Wells effective story writing and predictive ability. Written in 1898, 16 years before the outbreak of World War I, Wells weaves his storyline in a way which frighteningly resembles the wartorn countries during the Great War. The destroyed houses, burnt landscape, consistent gun fire, and general panic of the people all closely resemble scenes from the total war that was WWI. In fact, the Martian's own weapons resemble those used in the war: the heat ray can be compared to the flame thrower, while the black gas can be compared to the poisonous gas used on the battlefield. The style in which the Martians waged war, using powerful vehicular weapons, wasn't even fully realized until the Second World War (also having a striking resemblance to Wells' destroyed countryside). Wells accomplished in his narrative what few science fiction authors have been capable of: an accurate prediction of the future. Unfortunately for Wells, his prediction falls short at the end of the story. Wars are not simply ended on an instant, and these ends are entirely determined by humans.

War of the Worlds

The most interesting and, in my mind, important thing about War of the Worlds is not its presence as a seminal work of science fiction, but why it is there in the first place. Upon first glance, this looks like any other now-overdone alien invasion story--until one glances at the publishing date and realizes that, on the contrary, the whole point of this book is that it was among the very first of its kind. Wells was not fighting the cliches of bug-eyed monsters and little green men. He was not concerned with explaining why the Martians invaded (though it is obliquely suggested that, as they somehow live off of the blood of other living organisms, that it was for reasons of sustenance), but discussing the all-consuming terror that their invasion warranted. London (and the rest of the British Isles, but this is only brought up near the end) is invaded, and the world thrown into chaos.

As Wells points out in his epilogue, "We have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding-place for Man...the broadening of men's views that has resulted can scarcely be exaggerated. Before the cylinder fell there was a general persuasion that through all the deep of space no life existed beyond the pretty surface of our minute sphere." This goes back to last week's discussion re: the merits of science fiction as a genre. Even here, even this early, before science fiction was even coined as a term, Wells is using his writing to postulate the effects of an alien invasion on a very insular human race, and suggests that it would encourage space travel and eventual colonization. Wells contends that this horrible event, an alien attack that has destroyed families, homes, and cities, is useful in drawing humanity out of its complacency and into a position of universal understanding.

Another interesting question that Wells raises (perhaps unintentionally) has to do with Worlds's treatment of religion. Both the narrator and his brother spend a considerable time in the book praying, and, when the Martians have died, the narrator comments that he "believed that the destruction of Sennacherib had been repeated, that God had repented, that the Angel of Death had slain them in the night." Sennacherib, I believe, refers to the deaths of the nearly two hundred thousand Assyrians marching toward Jerusalem during the time of the Assyrian empire; the event was considered, for all intents and purposes, a deus ex machina. These references to God and religion in the face of alien invasion raise the question: if we are created in God's image, how does the focal point of religious belief and doctrine change when the added element of life on other planets is introduced? In this case, much as in the case of the Assyrians, the Martians are brought down by the Angel of Death--in the form of terrestrial bacteria to which they have no immunity--thus affirming a very ethnocentric view of religion.