Post by Andrei Tchentchik on Jan 17, 2020 17:41:29 GMT 2
(.#329).- The war of the worlds, the fiction novel of H. G. Wells.
The war of the worlds, the fiction novel of H. G. Wells.
Illustration of a tripod in the Belgian edition of 1906 by Henrique Alvim Corréa.
War of the Worlds (The War of the Worlds) is a science fiction novel written by HG Wells, published in 1898. It is one of the first works of imagination whose subject is humanity facing a hostile alien race, (2.) in addition to reflecting the anguish of the Victorian era and imperialism.
The novel was adapted into radio dramas (including a version of Orson Welles that would have hit the headlines in 1938, (3.) role plays, comics, four feature films and a series. (4.)
Author H. G. Wells
Country Flag United Kingdom United Kingdom
Genre Novel
Science fiction
Original version
Language British English
Title The War of the Worlds
Editor Heinemann
Release date 1898
French version
Translator Henry D. Davray
Publisher Mercure de France
Place of publication Paris
Release date 1900 (1.)
Type of media Paper book
Illustrator Charles Dudouyt (for the Calmann-Lévy edition of 1917)
Number of pages 324
Summary
"[...] Beyond the gulf of space, spirits who are to our minds what ours are to those animals that perish, vast intellects, calm and ruthless, regarded this earth with envious eyes, drew up slowly and surely their plans for the conquest of our world [...] »
1894. Astronomers witness strange activities on the surface of Mars, such as lightning or explosions of incandescent gas. The amazing phenomenon repeats itself for the next ten nights and then stops. Meteors coming from the red planet are soon heading for the Earth. The first crushes in England, in Surrey: it is an object having the shape of a cylinder of twenty-five to thirty meters. The curious gather around the crater formed by the fall of the projectile, but they are soon killed by a "fiery ray" projected by a gigantic machine with three enormous legs out of the cylinder.
Subsequently, the other cylinders sent from Mars crash and release other mechanical devices controlled by sprawling creatures installed inside. These tripods, armed with their fiery ray and a toxic gas called "black smoke", go to London disintegrating everything in their path. The British army replies. But quickly, the fight turns to the advantage of the invaders. The terrified people are fleeing this implacable enemy who pump the blood of the unfortunate he captures and sows everywhere a mysterious red grass that stifles all vegetation. Then begins for the narrator, a flight into a ravaged world, where he only crosses human beings isolated at the limit of madness. Then, he realizes that the Martians suddenly stopped all activity: the Earth germs, against which they were not immune, exterminated them.
Genesis and context
Compared size between Earth and Mars.
The canals of Mars
From the end of the nineteenth century, the belief in the existence of Martian canals and inhabited planets marked the popular imagination. In 1877, the astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, director of the Milan observatory, observed the presence of very large rectilinear traces on the surface of the planet Mars. This discovery is not unanimous, however. Percival Lowell, a millionaire, decides to devote himself exclusively to the study of the red planet and founds in 1894 an observatory in Arizona with his personal fortune. In 1900, he referred more than 400 channels too straight, according to him, to be natural formations. Lowell is soon persuaded that Mars is home to an advanced civilization fighting a major drought. (5.)
H. G. Wells settled in Surrey in 1895 with his wife. He spends much of his days writing and walking in the countryside. During one of these walks, Wells and his brother discuss the possibility of the arrival of beings from another planet. The discussion made an idea in the head of the writer, soon nourished by articles on the famous channels of Mars. (6.) In 1896, Wells, who closely followed the scientific advances of his day, published Intelligence on Mars, where he layered on paper what would become The War of the Worlds. The author suggests that Martians are attracted to the Earth because their own world, very old, is dry and dying. (7.)
Colonialism and naval domination
In War of the Worlds, a form of extraterrestrial life from Mars attacks London. We are at the end of the nineteenth century and the British Empire, the territorial group of colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories governed by the United Kingdom, extends over a large part of the globe and knows no opponent. Wells upsets that conviction by reducing that empire to ruins, wiped out by greater power. Martians impose themselves as a "superior race". (8.)
The ultimate instrument of British imperialist domination in the nineteenth century was its navy. In a very symbolic way, the English invaded by the Martians resort to the absolute weapon of the time, a pre-dreadnought battleship, which commences the fight with a Martian tripod in the estuary of the Thames. The battleship destroys a tripod with a direct blow, but, without much difficulty, the other tripodes destroy it in the minutes that follow, thanks to the "burning ray", which causes the explosion of the ammunition bunkers of the battleship, whose wreck in flames comes to spur a second tripod.
At the time of H.G. Wells, the English colonial system was the object of criticism from intellectuals, and in particular from Wells, a pacifist sharply engaged on the left. The astronomical budgets of the Royal Navy and the naval arms race with Germany, at a time when the standard two-power doctrine prevailed (the English navy had to be more powerful than the sum of the two navies coming after it) , were also controversial.
Adaptations
First illustrated editions
The first illustrated editions are signed in the English edition by Warwick Goble (in Pearson's Magazine, 1898) then, in French, by Henri Lanos (in Je sais tout, September 1905) and Henrique Alvim Corrêa (L. Vandamme, Brussels, 1906). ).
Comic
• In 1946-1947, Edgar P. Jacobs made illustrations of La Guerre des mondes in the pages of the Journal de Tintin. An album released by Dargaud in 1986 reproduces these illustrations.
• The comics Killraven is inspired directly by The War of the Worlds placed in a modern context.
• The second mini-series of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen takes place at the time of The War of the Worlds and offers an alternative vision.
• 2005 - War of the Worlds, a comic book written by Ian Edginton and drawn by D'Israeli, originally published by Dark Horse Comics and published in French in 2006 by Kymera under the title War of the Worlds.
• 2007 - The War of the Worlds, screenplay by Philippe Chanoinat, drawings by Alain Zibel, colors by Patrice Duplan, Editions Adonis, Collection Romans de Toujours. Reissued in 2016 at Glénat, The Great Classics of comic book literature.
• The Great War of the Worlds 2016 A trilogy uchronie to the astonishing and original theme! When the War of the Worlds meets the First World War.
• 2017 - War of the Worlds, Dobbs and Vicente Cifuentes (Matteo Vattani colors), Glénat (HG Wells collection).
Novels
• In 2003, Jean-Pierre Guillet proposed a sequel to War of the Worlds, The Cage of London. (9.) In this novel, some time after having failed, the Martians reoffend and, better prepared, conquer. Since then, they feed on the blood of humans parked in huge enclosures.
• Christopher Priest's novel The Machine to Explore Space (1976) is a continuation of War of the Worlds and H. G. Wells' Time Machine.
Radio
• Main article: The War of the Worlds (radio, 1938)
Cinema
• 1953: The War of the Worlds by Byron Haskin
• 2005: The War of the Worlds by Steven Spielberg
• 2005: The War of the Worlds, by Timothy Hines
• 2005: The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds) by David Michael Latt
• 2008: War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave by C. Thomas Howell
• 2012: Neil Johnson's Battle invasion (Alien Dawn)
• 2014: Neil Johnson's Invasion (Dawn of Destruction)
Music
The novel inspired a concept album in 1978, followed by an update in 2012 by Jeff Wayne. The form alternates the narrative parts of a reporter witnessing the extraterrestrial invasion with musical parties sung by protagonists, whose lyrics refer to the context of the story.
• Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of The Worlds.
• Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds - The New Generation.
Television
• War of the Worlds, American TV series created in 1988.
• War of the Worlds, television series of Canal and Fox with Lea Drucker, Elizabeth McGovern, Gabriel Byrne or Adel Bencherif.
Video games
• The War of the Worlds
• The striders of the video game Half-Life 2 are very similar to the tripods of The War of the Worlds.
Influence
Sculpture after the work of Wells. Woking, Surrey
The theme of alien invasion is popular in the cinema, with for example The Daleks Invading the Earth, Flying Saucers Attacking, Invasion Planet Earth, The Invaders of WC Menzies Red Planet (1953), The Invasion comes from Mars (1985) by Tobe Hooper, The Day the Earth stopped (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951) by Robert Wise, etc., then, more recently, with feature films like Rencontres du troisième type (1977) by Steven Spielberg, AND the Extraterrestrial (1982) or Independence Day and Evolution by Ivan Reitman. The burlesque Mars Attacks! Tim Burton presents in particular the unexpected and unspeakable defeat of the Martian invaders, unlike War of the Worlds where the invader is destroyed by terrestrial microbes.
Also noteworthy are the recent television series Defiance and Falling Skies.
Notes and references
• Quoted in The Ideal Library of SF (1988).
1. ↑ "second edition of The war of the worlds in French" [archive], on Gallica.fr
2. War of the Worlds: From Wells to Spielberg p. 5, John L. Flynn (2005).
3. ↑ [archive] "War of the worlds": history of a false collective panic on the Youtube channel of the World
4. "" The War of the Worlds ": a new Original Creation of CANAL +" [archive], on myCANAL (accessed January 31, 2019)
5. A little history of Martian observation: the channels of Mars [archive].
6. H.G. Wells, Christopher Martin (1988).
7. H.G. Wells, John Batchelor, Cambridge University Press (1985).
8. Franklin, H. Bruce, War Stars, University of Massachusetts Press, 2008.
9. Jean-Pierre Guillet, The cage of London, Quebec, Alire, 2003, 243 p. (ISBN 2-922145-71-9, read online [archive])
F I N .
The war of the worlds, the fiction novel of H. G. Wells.
Illustration of a tripod in the Belgian edition of 1906 by Henrique Alvim Corréa.
War of the Worlds (The War of the Worlds) is a science fiction novel written by HG Wells, published in 1898. It is one of the first works of imagination whose subject is humanity facing a hostile alien race, (2.) in addition to reflecting the anguish of the Victorian era and imperialism.
The novel was adapted into radio dramas (including a version of Orson Welles that would have hit the headlines in 1938, (3.) role plays, comics, four feature films and a series. (4.)
Author H. G. Wells
Country Flag United Kingdom United Kingdom
Genre Novel
Science fiction
Original version
Language British English
Title The War of the Worlds
Editor Heinemann
Release date 1898
French version
Translator Henry D. Davray
Publisher Mercure de France
Place of publication Paris
Release date 1900 (1.)
Type of media Paper book
Illustrator Charles Dudouyt (for the Calmann-Lévy edition of 1917)
Number of pages 324
Summary
"[...] Beyond the gulf of space, spirits who are to our minds what ours are to those animals that perish, vast intellects, calm and ruthless, regarded this earth with envious eyes, drew up slowly and surely their plans for the conquest of our world [...] »
1894. Astronomers witness strange activities on the surface of Mars, such as lightning or explosions of incandescent gas. The amazing phenomenon repeats itself for the next ten nights and then stops. Meteors coming from the red planet are soon heading for the Earth. The first crushes in England, in Surrey: it is an object having the shape of a cylinder of twenty-five to thirty meters. The curious gather around the crater formed by the fall of the projectile, but they are soon killed by a "fiery ray" projected by a gigantic machine with three enormous legs out of the cylinder.
Subsequently, the other cylinders sent from Mars crash and release other mechanical devices controlled by sprawling creatures installed inside. These tripods, armed with their fiery ray and a toxic gas called "black smoke", go to London disintegrating everything in their path. The British army replies. But quickly, the fight turns to the advantage of the invaders. The terrified people are fleeing this implacable enemy who pump the blood of the unfortunate he captures and sows everywhere a mysterious red grass that stifles all vegetation. Then begins for the narrator, a flight into a ravaged world, where he only crosses human beings isolated at the limit of madness. Then, he realizes that the Martians suddenly stopped all activity: the Earth germs, against which they were not immune, exterminated them.
Genesis and context
Compared size between Earth and Mars.
The canals of Mars
From the end of the nineteenth century, the belief in the existence of Martian canals and inhabited planets marked the popular imagination. In 1877, the astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, director of the Milan observatory, observed the presence of very large rectilinear traces on the surface of the planet Mars. This discovery is not unanimous, however. Percival Lowell, a millionaire, decides to devote himself exclusively to the study of the red planet and founds in 1894 an observatory in Arizona with his personal fortune. In 1900, he referred more than 400 channels too straight, according to him, to be natural formations. Lowell is soon persuaded that Mars is home to an advanced civilization fighting a major drought. (5.)
H. G. Wells settled in Surrey in 1895 with his wife. He spends much of his days writing and walking in the countryside. During one of these walks, Wells and his brother discuss the possibility of the arrival of beings from another planet. The discussion made an idea in the head of the writer, soon nourished by articles on the famous channels of Mars. (6.) In 1896, Wells, who closely followed the scientific advances of his day, published Intelligence on Mars, where he layered on paper what would become The War of the Worlds. The author suggests that Martians are attracted to the Earth because their own world, very old, is dry and dying. (7.)
Colonialism and naval domination
In War of the Worlds, a form of extraterrestrial life from Mars attacks London. We are at the end of the nineteenth century and the British Empire, the territorial group of colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories governed by the United Kingdom, extends over a large part of the globe and knows no opponent. Wells upsets that conviction by reducing that empire to ruins, wiped out by greater power. Martians impose themselves as a "superior race". (8.)
The ultimate instrument of British imperialist domination in the nineteenth century was its navy. In a very symbolic way, the English invaded by the Martians resort to the absolute weapon of the time, a pre-dreadnought battleship, which commences the fight with a Martian tripod in the estuary of the Thames. The battleship destroys a tripod with a direct blow, but, without much difficulty, the other tripodes destroy it in the minutes that follow, thanks to the "burning ray", which causes the explosion of the ammunition bunkers of the battleship, whose wreck in flames comes to spur a second tripod.
At the time of H.G. Wells, the English colonial system was the object of criticism from intellectuals, and in particular from Wells, a pacifist sharply engaged on the left. The astronomical budgets of the Royal Navy and the naval arms race with Germany, at a time when the standard two-power doctrine prevailed (the English navy had to be more powerful than the sum of the two navies coming after it) , were also controversial.
Adaptations
First illustrated editions
The first illustrated editions are signed in the English edition by Warwick Goble (in Pearson's Magazine, 1898) then, in French, by Henri Lanos (in Je sais tout, September 1905) and Henrique Alvim Corrêa (L. Vandamme, Brussels, 1906). ).
Comic
• In 1946-1947, Edgar P. Jacobs made illustrations of La Guerre des mondes in the pages of the Journal de Tintin. An album released by Dargaud in 1986 reproduces these illustrations.
• The comics Killraven is inspired directly by The War of the Worlds placed in a modern context.
• The second mini-series of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen takes place at the time of The War of the Worlds and offers an alternative vision.
• 2005 - War of the Worlds, a comic book written by Ian Edginton and drawn by D'Israeli, originally published by Dark Horse Comics and published in French in 2006 by Kymera under the title War of the Worlds.
• 2007 - The War of the Worlds, screenplay by Philippe Chanoinat, drawings by Alain Zibel, colors by Patrice Duplan, Editions Adonis, Collection Romans de Toujours. Reissued in 2016 at Glénat, The Great Classics of comic book literature.
• The Great War of the Worlds 2016 A trilogy uchronie to the astonishing and original theme! When the War of the Worlds meets the First World War.
• 2017 - War of the Worlds, Dobbs and Vicente Cifuentes (Matteo Vattani colors), Glénat (HG Wells collection).
Novels
• In 2003, Jean-Pierre Guillet proposed a sequel to War of the Worlds, The Cage of London. (9.) In this novel, some time after having failed, the Martians reoffend and, better prepared, conquer. Since then, they feed on the blood of humans parked in huge enclosures.
• Christopher Priest's novel The Machine to Explore Space (1976) is a continuation of War of the Worlds and H. G. Wells' Time Machine.
Radio
• Main article: The War of the Worlds (radio, 1938)
Cinema
• 1953: The War of the Worlds by Byron Haskin
• 2005: The War of the Worlds by Steven Spielberg
• 2005: The War of the Worlds, by Timothy Hines
• 2005: The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds) by David Michael Latt
• 2008: War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave by C. Thomas Howell
• 2012: Neil Johnson's Battle invasion (Alien Dawn)
• 2014: Neil Johnson's Invasion (Dawn of Destruction)
Music
The novel inspired a concept album in 1978, followed by an update in 2012 by Jeff Wayne. The form alternates the narrative parts of a reporter witnessing the extraterrestrial invasion with musical parties sung by protagonists, whose lyrics refer to the context of the story.
• Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of The Worlds.
• Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds - The New Generation.
Television
• War of the Worlds, American TV series created in 1988.
• War of the Worlds, television series of Canal and Fox with Lea Drucker, Elizabeth McGovern, Gabriel Byrne or Adel Bencherif.
Video games
• The War of the Worlds
• The striders of the video game Half-Life 2 are very similar to the tripods of The War of the Worlds.
Influence
Sculpture after the work of Wells. Woking, Surrey
The theme of alien invasion is popular in the cinema, with for example The Daleks Invading the Earth, Flying Saucers Attacking, Invasion Planet Earth, The Invaders of WC Menzies Red Planet (1953), The Invasion comes from Mars (1985) by Tobe Hooper, The Day the Earth stopped (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951) by Robert Wise, etc., then, more recently, with feature films like Rencontres du troisième type (1977) by Steven Spielberg, AND the Extraterrestrial (1982) or Independence Day and Evolution by Ivan Reitman. The burlesque Mars Attacks! Tim Burton presents in particular the unexpected and unspeakable defeat of the Martian invaders, unlike War of the Worlds where the invader is destroyed by terrestrial microbes.
Also noteworthy are the recent television series Defiance and Falling Skies.
Notes and references
• Quoted in The Ideal Library of SF (1988).
1. ↑ "second edition of The war of the worlds in French" [archive], on Gallica.fr
2. War of the Worlds: From Wells to Spielberg p. 5, John L. Flynn (2005).
3. ↑ [archive] "War of the worlds": history of a false collective panic on the Youtube channel of the World
4. "" The War of the Worlds ": a new Original Creation of CANAL +" [archive], on myCANAL (accessed January 31, 2019)
5. A little history of Martian observation: the channels of Mars [archive].
6. H.G. Wells, Christopher Martin (1988).
7. H.G. Wells, John Batchelor, Cambridge University Press (1985).
8. Franklin, H. Bruce, War Stars, University of Massachusetts Press, 2008.
9. Jean-Pierre Guillet, The cage of London, Quebec, Alire, 2003, 243 p. (ISBN 2-922145-71-9, read online [archive])
F I N .
