Cover of the Jeff Wayne’s 1978 musical version of The War of the Worlds – it’s pretty good! “The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one…but still they come”

(1) H.G. WELLS –
THE TIME MACHINE & THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1895-1898)

My world of science fiction is still mostly Morlocks and Martians. And so is the world of science fiction in general, due to H. G. Wells. Just as J. R. R. Tolkien defined modern literary fantasy, H. G. Wells defined modern literary science fiction. He gave science fiction its most archetypal themes and tropes, notably time travel and alien invasion – and he did so in just two short novels, The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. Indeed, those two novels are the mythic heart of science fiction.

Wells created and even named the concept of a mechanism for controlled and deliberate time travel, the now proverbial time machine, ancestor of every Tardis, DeLorean and Hot Tub Time Machine as well as all those time travel devices they keep pulling out of the Terminator franchise – in the novel of that same name, published in 1895. However, he did more than simply conceive the time machine – he also created a mythic vision of the far future that has endured in science fiction.

In the novel, the Time Traveler With No Name (a suitable predecessor for Doctor Who) travels to the year 802, 701 – where humanity has evolved into the childlike and docile Eloi, apparently living an idyllic existence provided by advanced technology but lacking any intellect or strength. He soon discovers the twist that humanity has actually evolved into two species from its classes – the Eloi are the descendants of the leisured upper class, while the bestial, subterranean Morlocks are the descendants of the working class and actually maintain all the industry or technology for the Eloi. However, in the future, the revolution will not be televised – the Morlocks also maintain the Eloi as livestock, farming them for food in the ultimate act of eating the rich. (How’s that for letting them eat cake, Marie Antoinette?). The Time Traveler has to battle the Morlocks in their subterranean lair to recover his Time Machine (and travel into the even further far future for even more grimdark hopelessness).

This theme of evolution in The Time Machine (or Morlocks eating Eloi) endures in science fiction, albeit transformed. The scenario of class-based evolution is simplistic, but is made more plausible by technology such as genetic engineering – the film Gattaca in some ways resembles a tale of engineered elite Eloi and non-engineered, proletariat Morlocks, although the protagonist is a Morlock posing as an Eloi. However, the true descendants of Wells’ tale are not so much the products of biological evolution but cybernetic evolution, involving artificial intelligence, robots or other machine Morlocks that rise up against their human Eloi – such as in the Terminator (doubly so for involving time machines) and the Matrix (which actually has the machines farming humanity for energy).

Wells’ The War of the Worlds, published in 1898, was similar to other works in the genre of British ‘invasion literature’ at that time, but with a fundamental distinguishing feature that made it a definitive work of science fiction – as opposed to invasions by human armies (typically German but also French or Russian), this was a genuinely alien invasion from Mars, as is made clear in its immortal opening line:

“Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of 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 so the Martians descend upon Britain (near Woking in Surrey) in their spaceship ‘cylinders’ and attack the heart of the British Empire in their tripods armed with heat rays – although in the actual narrative, the Martian forces are not as strong as one might expect for advanced aliens able to invade other planets through space (and tripods would seem to be even less stable and more useless than Imperial Walkers). After all, Martian tripods are destroyed by nineteenth century artillery and an ironclad ship. Pathetic! We’d mop the floor with those Martians with our modern military forces. In the end, however, it is the Martians mopping up Britain, just as the British Empire wiped out the indigenous people of Tasmania, a pointed observation made by Wells. The Martians nourish themselves on human blood like space vampires, matched by their red weed vegetation choking out Earth’s native plant life. Fortunately, the Martians and their vegetation succumb to Earth’s bacteria and viruses, in what must rank as one of the most incredible oversights by an invading alien force although infinitely more plausible than the computer virus in Independence Day.

The War of the Worlds has a large sphere of narrative or thematic influence in science fiction. For that matter, it (like The Time Machine) has so many adaptations (including parallel or sequel stories) that I’m beginning to think it actually happened…

FANTASY & HORROR

Similarly to Tolkien with fantasy, H.G.Wells is such an archetype of modern literary SF that it seems blasphemous to assert other speculative fiction genres at play in work. But let’s face it, the science gets a little fantastic in his science fiction – not so much in these two novels but in his other novels. The Morlocks and Martians have more than their elements of horror as well – as indeed is apparent in their cinematic successors – not least in their ultimate cosmic horror of evolution and entropy.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)