This book is by H.G. Wells, who is sometimes known as "the father of science fiction" (W). And in fact, this book is one of the books that helped establish that reputation (W). The Invisible Man has also become one of the iconic figures of horror fiction.
This book was first published in 1897. It's a slim little book. According to Wikipedia, it was 149 pages in the original edition. My copy (Arcturus Publishing--pictured on the left) is 207 pages.
My History With This Book
This is a re-read. I read this book once before way back when I was in middle school.
I've already recounted my history with H.G. Wells on this blog a couple times (HERE, HERE and HERE). But for the purposes of making this post stand independently, I'll recount it again here.
I first discovered H.G. Wells through Great Classics Illustrated (W).
When we were children, my sister was given a collection of Great Classics Illustrated one Christmas. Although it was given to my sister, we both devoured it.
There were two books by H.G. Wells in that collection: The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. I was utterly captivated by both stories.
When I got slightly older (in middle school), I tried to seek out more H.G. Wells. I did not, at that time, feel any need to seek out the original versions of The Time Machine or The War of the Worlds. (Having read the Great Classics Illustrated versions, I considered those books "already read"). But I was interested in tracking down the other H.G. Wells books that had not been included in the Great Classics Illustrated collection. And, the most famous of these was The Invisible Man (*)
I was at this same time becoming obsessed with the classic black-and-white monster movies (as I've written about before HERE, HERE and HERE). And the 1933 horror movie, The Invisible Man (W) was one of the Universal Classic Monster movies (W) (**)
I also saw the 1933 The Invisible Man during these years when it was shown on AMC (W). I don't remember if it was before or after I read the book.
But at any rate, due to my interest in H.G. Wells, and due to my interest in classic monster movies, I bought a copy of The Invisible Man from my local bookstore and read it sometime in middle school. (I don't remember the exact year.)
That was many years ago now, and I'd since largely forgotten almost all the content from that book. I remember reading the book--I remember carrying it along with me on a family vacation on year, and I remember reading it on the airplane. I remember what the cover illustration on my copy looked like. And I remember the feelings I had reading that book. But aside from a few vague recollections, I had forgotten the story.
I do, however, remember the general feeling of reading that book. I remember find H.G. Wells' prose very dry and boring. And I remember finding the book painfully slow moving.
The only other H.G. Wells book that I read in middle school was In the Days of the Comet (W). (This is probably one of Wells' lesser known books, but it happened to be in my local bookstore, so I picked it up.) I found In the Days of the Comet to be much the same as The Invisible Man--very slow moving, and with a prose style I found dull and uninteresting.
I then developed the impression of H.G. Wells as a writer who had a lot of interesting story ideas, but who didn't write in a readable or engaging way.
I didn't read anything else by H.G. Wells until 1996, when I got caught up in the hype surrounding the release of the movie The Island of Dr. Moreau (W), and bought a copy of the book (W). Which I actually enjoyed a lot. (I was in college by this point, and I suppose my reading level had matured to the point where I could read Wells effortlessly.)
But in spite of this, I did not return to Wells until 8 years ago, when I finally got around to reading the original versions of The Time Machineand The War of the Worlds. And absolutely loved them. I decided that, now that I was an adult, I really like Wells' prose style.
Ever since then, I've been meaning to get around to re-reading The Invisible Man.
(*) Actually, according to Wikipedia, Great Classics Illustrated did eventually do a version of The Invisible Man in 1995, but by then I was no longer part of their target demographic. I was already in high school by then.
(**) Although the 1933 The Invisible Man is certainly an iconic monster movie, The Invisible Man character was never part of the shared universe of monster team ups with Frankenstein, The Wolf Man and Dracula. Unless you count The Invisible Man's cameo appearance in Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein.
There were also several other films in The Invisible Man franchise (see Wikipedia HERE).
I do not now remember if I saw during this period the 1940 The Invisible Man Returns (W). I might have. I don't think I saw any of the rest of The Invisible Man films. Although they look kind of fun. Maybe someday it would be fun to try to track down and review the whole series.
Why I Read This Book
In addition to all I've written above, the impetus for picking this book up now was Halloween and the month of October.
I had been toying with picking up a classic scary story for the month of October. It seemed like a fun thing to do for Halloween, and besides most of the other booktubers were doing it.
On the other hand, I am a very slow reader, and perpetually have a lot of half finished books on my currently reading list. So maybe starting a new reading project wasn't the best idea.
The other factor was that, for various reasons, I wasn't able to make my way to a bookstore at the beginning of October. I only made it to a bookstore near the end of October. (On October 19, the wife and I ended up doing some shopping at SC Vivo City, which has a bookstore with a selection of books in English.) So as I browsed that bookstore, I was looking for something short.
I'm overdue for a re-read of Dracula, but I decided that since October was already halfway over, Dracula looked too long to start now. (Maybe next year). But, The Invisible Man was only about 1/3 as long as Dracula, so it seemed the perfect book to start mid-month.
My Reading Journey / The Reading Experience
I wanted to make sure I finished this book off before October came to an end, so once I bought it, I put it on the top of my reading priority list. I easily finished it off in just 3 days.
Although I wrote above that I had largely forgotten this book, as I began to read it again, a lot of it came back to me. (I trust we've all had this experience --that Proustian experience of re-reading a book that we haven't read for years--or re-watching a movie-- and discovering that much more of it than we realized was actually still in our unconscious memory, just awaiting the right stimulus to come rushing back--so I won't waste time trying to describe that experience here. You all know what I mean.)
The book was on the whole a very easy read. It does have an older Victorian-era type prose style. I can see where it could easily have given middle-school-me some trouble. But from an adult perspective, it's completely readable. And largely enjoyable (although the pacing suffers in some sections.)
Plot Summary and Commentary (***SPOILERS***)
In a sleepy little countryside town in England, a mysterious stranger arrives at the inn. He is wrapped up in a coat and hat and gloves, which he refuses to take off, even when he is inside. And his face is all wrapped up in bandages, and his eyes are covered by dark glasses. He is working on some sort of mysterious experiment in his room. Meanwhile, several mysterious things seem to be happening in the stranger's room. Who could he be?
The mystery is teased out over several chapters, which can seem a bit overkill to the modern reader. Of course it's the invisible man! Everyone modern reader knows that instantly. The disguise of the invisible man is an iconic part of pop culture
Of course, when Wells' originally wrote this novel back in 1897, it was before the invisible man had become a pop icon. But still, even Wells' original audience had to know that this mysterious stranger was the invisible man, right? I mean, it's right there in the title of this novel.
[Unless... according to Wikipedia, this novel was original serialized in a magazine before being published as a novel. I wonder under what title it originally appeared under during serialization. Perhaps it originally had a different title which may have preserved the mystery?]
The narration throughout this section is told from the perspective of various villagers. The perspective jumps around from person to person, but never from the perspective of the invisible man the mysterious stranger himself. According to Wikipedia,
Then, finally, in chapter 7 (page 53 in my edition), the mystery is cleared up as stranger reveals himself to be invisible. There's a brief struggle, and then the invisible man disappears.
The narrative perspective then switches abruptly to a new character that we've never seen before, a tramp, Mr. Thomas Marvel, who the invisible man recruits as an unwilling accomplice.
There's then a confrontation between the invisible man and the villagers, and the perspective switches back to the villagers.
Thomas Marvel and the invisible man leave and travel to another village. The narrative perspective changes a few more times. (Sometimes from the perspective of Mr. Marvel, sometimes from the perspective of the people he encounters.)
Then, about halfway through the book, we are introduced to Dr. Kemp, who was completely absent from the first half of the book, but who will turn out to be the main protagonist of the second half of the book.
The invisible man, it turns out, is an old college classmate of Dr. Kemp's, and seeks refuge at Dr. Kemp's house. It is at this point that the invisible man also relates his whole backstory to Dr. Kemp.
This section is technically from the perspective of Dr. Kemp, who is listening to the invisible man monologuing, but the monologue itself is in the voice of the invisible man. So in this section we do get to hear the story of the invisible man in his own words.
The backstory is from chapter 19 to chapter 23 (pages 125 to 169 in my edition).
Parts of this backstory are interesting. H.G. Wells was of the school of science fiction writers that tried to incorporate actual scientific principles into his science fiction. So we get some discussion here about how visibility is created by light reflecting off of objects, and what the properties of a transparent object are. It's interesting as far as it goes, although I'm not sure I entirely understood all of it, and regardless I'm certainly not the person to evaluate it. (I'm certainly no scientist!) But at any rate, the science part is kept mercifully brief--only about 5 pages.
The rest of the invisible man's backstory is the story of how he struggled to find warmth, food, and shelter while being invisible. I thought this section went on for just a little bit too long. I started to get impatient with the backstory here, and wanted to get back to the main narrative. But this section is important for the main theme of the book--the invisible man wants invisibility because he wants to become more powerful than his fellow man. But he discovers that humans are reliant on each other for the basic necessities of life. Once he elects to separate himself out from society, he actually makes himself weaker, not stronger.
Here it is interesting to note that the whole plot of The Invisible Man is based on the fact that England has very cold and miserable weather. (The Invisible Man is a very British book in that regard. If H.G. Wells had been born in Vietnam instead of England, this book might have turned out very differently!) As soon as the invisible man puts on any clothes, then he's no longer invisible. (Only his actual body is invisible, not his clothing.) So he only has his invisibility powers as long as he is completely naked. But of course he can't go around walking naked for long in the English winter. So it turns out, being invisible in England is a very limited power.
The book eventually ends in a showdown between Dr. Kemp and the invisible man. And, to give credit where credit is due, the climax is suitably tense and exciting.
Evaluation / Extended Quotations
When I was a youngster, and I was first getting into all this stuff for the first time, I was extremely disappointed to find out that the old horror classics just weren't all that scary.
But I trust I'm not telling you anything that you didn't already know, right? We all know by now that the old classics just aren't scary anymore.
The question I do sometimes wonder is: how scary were they meant to be in the first place?
I mean, take The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, for example. I know it eventually went on to inspire a lot of monster movies, but I can't believe the original book was ever meant to be scary.
And then there's The Invisible Man. Like Frankenstein's monster and Mr Hyde, the character itself later went on to become synonymous with Universal Monster Movies, but what tone is the original book going for?
Much of the book doesn't seem to be trying to be scary at all.
The first half of the book actually has a lot more humorous scenes than scary scenes.
It's perhaps worth remembering that, back in his day, H.G. Wells was a noted comic writer as well as a science fiction writer. Nowadays, H.G. Wells is only remembered for his science fiction, but back in his day he was much praised for comic novels such as The History of Mr. Polly (W) (***).
And there seems to be a lot of comic scenes inserted into The Invisible Man as well. Take, for example, this scene where Teddy Henfrey, the clock-jobber, runs into Mr. Hall, the husband of the innkeeper Mrs. Hall:
At Gleeson’s corner he saw Hall, who had recently married the stranger’s hostess at the “Coach and Horses,” and who now drove the Iping conveyance, when occasional people required it, to Sidderbridge Junction, coming towards him on his return from that place. Hall had evidently been “stopping a bit” at Sidderbridge, to judge by his driving. “’Ow do, Teddy?” he said, passing.
“You got a rum un up home!” said Teddy.
Hall very sociably pulled up. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Rum-looking customer stopping at the ‘Coach and Horses,’” said Teddy. “My sakes!”
And he proceeded to give Hall a vivid description of his grotesque guest. “Looks a bit like a disguise, don’t it? I’d like to see a man’s face if I had him stopping in my place,” said Henfrey. “But women are that trustful—where strangers are concerned. He’s took your rooms and he ain’t even given a name, Hall.”
“You don’t say so!” said Hall, who was a man of sluggish apprehension.
“Yes,” said Teddy. “By the week. Whatever he is, you can’t get rid of him under the week. And he’s got a lot of luggage coming to-morrow, so he says. Let’s hope it won’t be stones in boxes, Hall.”
He told Hall how his aunt at Hastings had been swindled by a stranger with empty portmanteaux. Altogether he left Hall vaguely suspicious. “Get up, old girl,” said Hall. “I s’pose I must see ’bout this.”
Teddy trudged on his way with his mind considerably relieved.
Instead of “seeing ’bout it,” however, Hall on his return was severely rated by his wife on the length of time he had spent in Sidderbridge, and his mild inquiries were answered snappishly and in a manner not to the point. But the seed of suspicion Teddy had sown germinated in the mind of Mr. Hall in spite of these discouragements. “You wim’ don’t know everything,” said Mr. Hall, resolved to ascertain more about the personality of his guest at the earliest possible opportunity. (Chapter 2 p.21-23)
(Sidenote: I think Wells' humorous touch went entirely over my head when I was in middle school grade. Yet another reason why I appreciate this book more as an adult.)
I also got a chuckle out of the exasperated tone the invisible man took when he finally had to explain his condition to the villagers in chapter 7:
“Why!” said Huxter, suddenly, “that’s not a man at all. It’s just empty clothes. Look! You can see down his collar and the linings of his clothes. I could put my arm—”
He extended his hand; it seemed to meet something in mid-air, and he drew it back with a sharp exclamation. “I wish you’d keep your fingers out of my eye,” said the aerial voice, in a tone of savage expostulation. “The fact is, I’m all here—head, hands, legs, and all the rest of it, but it happens I’m invisible. It’s a confounded nuisance, but I am. That’s no reason why I should be poked to pieces by every stupid bumpkin in Iping, is it?”
The suit of clothes, now all unbuttoned and hanging loosely upon its unseen supports, stood up, arms akimbo.
Several other of the men folks had now entered the room, so that it was closely crowded. “Invisible, eh?” said Huxter, ignoring the stranger’s abuse. “Who ever heard the likes of that?”
“It’s strange, perhaps, but it’s not a crime. Why am I assaulted by a policeman in this fashion?” (chapter 7 pages 56-57)
But it's not all humorous. The invisible man himself actually has a lot of malice to him. And the tone of the story can switch quite suddenly from humorous to malicious. There's a part in chapter 11 where I thought this sudden tone shift was particularly well, so I'll quote part of it:
“Diary!” said Cuss, putting the three books on the table. “Now, at any rate, we shall learn something.” The Vicar stood with his hands on the table.
“Diary,” repeated Cuss, sitting down, putting two volumes to support the third, and opening it. “H’m—no name on the fly-leaf. Bother!—cypher. And figures.”
The vicar came round to look over his shoulder.
Cuss turned the pages over with a face suddenly disappointed. “I’m—dear me! It’s all cypher, Bunting.”
“There are no diagrams?” asked Mr. Bunting. “No illustrations throwing light—”
“See for yourself,” said Mr. Cuss. “Some of it’s mathematical and some of it’s Russian or some such language (to judge by the letters), and some of it’s Greek. Now the Greek I thought you—”
“Of course,” said Mr. Bunting, taking out and wiping his spectacles and feeling suddenly very uncomfortable—for he had no Greek left in his mind worth talking about; “yes—the Greek, of course, may furnish a clue.”
“I’ll find you a place.”
“I’d rather glance through the volumes first,” said Mr. Bunting, still wiping. “A general impression first, Cuss, and then, you know, we can go looking for clues.”
He coughed, put on his glasses, arranged them fastidiously, coughed again, and wished something would happen to avert the seemingly inevitable exposure. Then he took the volume Cuss handed him in a leisurely manner. And then something did happen.
The door opened suddenly.
Both gentlemen started violently, looked round, and were relieved to see a sporadically rosy face beneath a furry silk hat. “Tap?” asked the face, and stood staring.
“No,” said both gentlemen at once.
“Over the other side, my man,” said Mr. Bunting. And “Please shut that door,” said Mr. Cuss, irritably.
“All right,” said the intruder, as it seemed in a low voice curiously different from the huskiness of its first inquiry. “Right you are,” said the intruder in the former voice. “Stand clear!” and he vanished and closed the door.
“A sailor, I should judge,” said Mr. Bunting. “Amusing fellows, they are. Stand clear! indeed. A nautical term, referring to his getting back out of the room, I suppose.”
“I daresay so,” said Cuss. “My nerves are all loose to-day. It quite made me jump—the door opening like that.”
Mr. Bunting smiled as if he had not jumped. “And now,” he said with a sigh, “these books.”
Someone sniffed as he did so.
“One thing is indisputable,” said Bunting, drawing up a chair next to that of Cuss. “There certainly have been very strange things happen in Iping during the last few days—very strange. I cannot of course believe in this absurd invisibility story—”
“It’s incredible,” said Cuss—“incredible. But the fact remains that I saw—I certainly saw right down his sleeve—”
“But did you—are you sure? Suppose a mirror, for instance— hallucinations are so easily produced. I don’t know if you have ever seen a really good conjuror—”
“I won’t argue again,” said Cuss. “We’ve thrashed that out, Bunting. And just now there’s these books—Ah! here’s some of what I take to be Greek! Greek letters certainly.”
He pointed to the middle of the page. Mr. Bunting flushed slightly and brought his face nearer, apparently finding some difficulty with his glasses. Suddenly he became aware of a strange feeling at the nape of his neck. He tried to raise his head, and encountered an immovable resistance. The feeling was a curious pressure, the grip of a heavy, firm hand, and it bore his chin irresistibly to the table. “Don’t move, little men,” whispered a voice, “or I’ll brain you both!” He looked into the face of Cuss, close to his own, and each saw a horrified reflection of his own sickly astonishment. (From Chapter 11, p. 73-76)
I thought that section was quite good when I first read it--the way it suddenly changes from the innocent humor of the Vicar and Mr. Cuss to the cold scary malice of the invisible man.
As you keep reading through that section, the tone changes again several more times between humor and scary in a way that I thought was very skillful.
**********************************
When it comes to classic monsters, the invisible man is in many ways the least impressive of the bunch. After all, he doesn't have any superhuman strength or special powers. He's just invisible. That's not really that deadly.
And yet, horror fiction has never been about what how potentially deadly the monster can be. Successful horror fiction is about how well the monster taps into our brain's primordial fear centers (****).
The idea that an adversary can be hidden somewhere in the room, unseen and unseeable, and can jump out to attack us at any moment is something that definitely triggers our primitive panic impulses. (I suppose their must be an evolutionary fear trigger here--the fear of unseen predators lurking in the bushes.)
There are a couple scenes in this book where H.G. Wells expertly plays on the panic of knowing the invisible man is out to get you, but not knowing where he is.
The “Jolly Cricketers” is just at the bottom of the hill, where the tram-lines begin. The barman leant his fat red arms on the counter and talked of horses with an anaemic cabman, while a black-bearded man in grey snapped up biscuit and cheese, drank Burton, and conversed in American with a policeman off duty.
“What’s the shouting about!” said the anaemic cabman, going off at a tangent, trying to see up the hill over the dirty yellow blind in the low window of the inn. Somebody ran by outside. “Fire, perhaps,” said the barman.
Footsteps approached, running heavily, the door was pushed open violently, and Marvel, weeping and dishevelled, his hat gone, the neck of his coat torn open, rushed in, made a convulsive turn, and attempted to shut the door. It was held half open by a strap.
“Coming!” he bawled, his voice shrieking with terror. “He’s coming. The ’Visible Man! After me! For Gawd’s sake! ’Elp! ’Elp! ’Elp!”
“Shut the doors,” said the policeman. “Who’s coming? What’s the row?” He went to the door, released the strap, and it slammed. The American closed the other door.
“Lemme go inside,” said Marvel, staggering and weeping, but still clutching the books. “Lemme go inside. Lock me in—somewhere. I tell you he’s after me. I give him the slip. He said he’d kill me and he will.”
“You’re safe,” said the man with the black beard. “The door’s shut. What’s it all about?”
“Lemme go inside,” said Marvel, and shrieked aloud as a blow suddenly made the fastened door shiver and was followed by a hurried rapping and a shouting outside. “Hullo,” cried the policeman, “who’s there?” Mr. Marvel began to make frantic dives at panels that looked like doors. “He’ll kill me—he’s got a knife or something. For Gawd’s sake—!”
“Here you are,” said the barman. “Come in here.” And he held up the flap of the bar.
Mr. Marvel rushed behind the bar as the summons outside was repeated. “Don’t open the door,” he screamed. “Please don’t open the door. Where shall I hide?”
“This, this Invisible Man, then?” asked the man with the black beard, with one hand behind him. “I guess it’s about time we saw him.”
The window of the inn was suddenly smashed in, and there was a screaming and running to and fro in the street. The policeman had been standing on the settee staring out, craning to see who was at the door. He got down with raised eyebrows. “It’s that,” he said. The barman stood in front of the bar-parlour door which was now locked on Mr. Marvel, stared at the smashed window, and came round to the two other men. (from Chapter 16, page 100-102)
The scene goes on, but you get the idea. There's also an extended confrontation at the end of the book which is also well done, and also plays on that creepy feeling of knowing the invisible man is there somewhere, but not knowing exactly where he is.
**** Actually while I'm on the topic, I can resist mentioning a different book which I think played very well on the contradiction between what is actually deadly, and what our primitive brains find scary: The Werewolf of Paris. The whole book the reader is focused on the werewolf attacks, and then, at the very end of the book, the narrator suddenly pulls back to ask: Why are we so focused on this werewolf, which has only killed a handful of people, when the government of Paris is killing 20,000 people by firing squads?
Links
* An interesting Youtube video on H.G. Wells: The History of Sci Fi - H.G. Wells - Extra Sci Fi - #2 by Extra Credits. They briefly mention The Invisible Man, and call it Wells' anti-libertarian novel because the invisible man's rejection of society for personal gain leaves him weaker than the weakest of us.
* The Intellectuals and the Masses by John Carey devotes 2 whole chapters to the works of H.G. Wells, but, unfortunately, mentions The invisible Man only very briefly. John Carey claims that some of Wells' other books appear to endorse the Nietzschean idea of the superior individual, but...
But in other stories--The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr Moreau, The Country of the Blind--the superiority of the singular individual is by no means apparent. The murderous, invisible Griffin and the crazed vivisectionist Moreau are prodigies that seem to endorse the ordinary man's suspicion of ruthless scientific genius (p.138)
8 out of 10 stars. Granted it's just a silly science fiction story, but you have to judge these things against what the author set out to do, and for what he was trying to do, Wells succeeded wonderfully. It's borderline 9 stars, but I'm taking one point off for the pacing issues.
The Time Machine is another one of my favorite books. I read a simplified version of it as a kid, which had a big impact on me. And I finally got around to reading the original text 3.5 years ago--my review HERE.
(In my 2014 review, I used the Classics Illustrated version for the picture because it was visually appealing and also non-spoilery. Now that I'm reviewing the actual Classics Illustrated comic, I wish I had used a different visual back in 2014.)
Anyway...
I was able to find two different comic book versions of this story online. There was the Marvel Classics Comic book version (LINK HERE) and the Classics Illustrated version (LINK HERE).
Of these two comics, the Marvel Classics version was more faithful to the original H.G. Wells story. But the visuals were a little bit confusing, and the language was a bit difficult.
Classics Illustrated on the other hand was very visually appealing and easy to follow. Nice bright colors. Very simple pictures.
And also, for the most part, incredibly simple language.
It was really ideal for the ESL classroom.
Unfortunately, however, the Classics Illustrated version had taken a lot of the punches out of H.G. Well's original novel.
In the interest of keeping this post spoiler free, I'm not going to list the plot points here. If you read H.G. Well's novel, and if you read the comic, you'll be able to notice them for yourself.
I'll just say that a few of the darker twists were removed from the Classics Illustrated version.
Which I thought was unfortunate.
One of the reasons The Time Machine stuck in my mind so much as a kid was precisely because of the darker ending.
But in spite of this disappointment, I went with The Classics Illustrated version just because it was so much more easier to read and more visually appealing to younger kids.
(Sidenote: Anyone out there read Classics Illustrated as a kid? I think they were a bit before my time. According to Wikipedia (W), they stopped publication in 1971. But I've noticed there is a lot of nostalgia for Classics Illustrated on the Internet, so maybe they were available in reprint form during the 1980s? I personally don't remember hearing about them before the Internet though.)
I broke The Time Machine up into 4 separate parts, and used it for Story Time.
It was a huge hit. The kids were really hooked on the story right from the beginning, and got sucked into the mystery of it.
Each time I got to the end of each section, they wanted more. Student engagement was really high.
Even my wife (who I test piloted these stories on before using them in class) commented, "I really love these kind of imaginative stories."
The social commentary in the comic book is a bit vague. (Although to be fair, I think some of this was also a bit vague in the original novel--it was hinted at, but not explicitly spelled out.) So to help my students connect the dots, I put in a brief explanation at the beginning of part 4 to more explicitly point out to them what the theme of the novel was.
Here are the materials I use when teaching this book:
Subtitle: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939
(Book Review) Why I Read This Book
Left to myself, I would never have picked up this book. But this book came courtesy of Whisky Prajer, who not only recommended this book to me, but went through the trouble of shipping it out to me in Vietnam.
I probably won't find it out here. But, you never know. Often books can sit for a few years on my "to read" list before I stumble across them in odd and unexpected places. Or on my next trip back home. Are you going to give this one a review on your blog?
Whisky:
It's been a pile of years since I read it, and the Amazon reviews for it are generally pretty sharp so it's not something I'm much compelled to do. It's a shame mail to Vietnam is so shitty, I'd send you my copy.
I'll tell you what then: if the book's on it's way out anyway, you could try sending it my way. I ordinarily discourage people from sending me anything valuable, because the mail here is not 100% reliable. But it's still about half reliable. And if the book is on its way out anyway, then I guess there's nothing lost by trying.
...Well, the book made it out here, and now here I am with the review.
General Over-all Impression
I liked the book well enough, but I wasn't quite wowed by it the way Whisky Prajer had been.
To which I simply attribute: different people, different temperaments, different interests, etc.
At first glance, it's easy to see why Whisky Prajer thought of me in connection with the book. The book covers the early modern period (my pet historical interest) and it talks about many of the same authors and books I've reviewed on this blog (full list below.) For example, H.G. Wells, who I've repeatedly - praised - on this blog, is the subject of not one, but two whole chapters. And this book puts D.H. Lawrence in context, and helps me to better understand the themes of Lady Chatterley's Lover.
But on the other hand...
I've never really had a lot of patience for analyzing the themes of literature.
Despite being an English minor at college, I've always been much more interested in literature as a narrative rather than as vehicle for philosophy.
It's the same impulse that drives me to narrative histories instead of analytical histories. I like stories. I have neither the temperate nor the intellect to engage deeply with themes.
And while it is true that I've bitten off some heavily thematic books in the past, this has been more broccoli than pleasure. I read the classics for the same reason a lot of people read the classics--a sense of obligation--I feel like I should. (And if you read my book reviews, you'll notice that I complain a lot whenever the book gets too deep or philosophical).
That, plus I'm not nearly well-read enough to enjoy a book like this.
I enjoyed the chapters on the authors that I have read (the two chapters of H.G. Wells were really interesting). But I had less interest in authors I had never heard of--George Gissing, Arnold Bennett, Wyndham Lewis.
The ideal reader of this book is better read than I am, both in literature and philosophy. (Nietzsche's theories are reference frequently, but I have never read a single thing by Nietzsche).
Whisky, if you read his blog (and if you don't, you're missing out), is a lot better at this stuff than I am. He's very good at analyzing the themes of literature, and of popular media in general. So it's not hard to imagine why a book like this would have appealed to him.
I regret to say I won't be able to do this book justice with my own analysis.
But with all that out off the way, it would be an exaggeration to say I got nothing out of this book. I gained a lot of interesting tidbits from this book, and I'll try to share what I learned below.
First, a comment on readability:
Readability
John Carey writes very readable prose. So despite the fact that I had limited interest in George Gissing, Arnold Bennett, Wyndham Lewis, etc, my eyes never really glazed over, and I was able to get through the end of the book painlessly. John Carey was able to hold my interest with his prose.
What is This Book About?
It's always risky to attempt to describe in a few short paragraphs what an author has spent 246 pages doing. But that caveat aside, here's my attempt at a summary.
England in 1880-1939 was undergoing a transformation. In the last century, population had exploded as never before. (Of course it's nothing like the population crisis we are currently facing, but it was still unprecedented for its time.)
As the overcrowded cities began overflowing into overcrowded suburbs, the landscape of pastoral England started to change rapidly, and many intellectuals began to lament the loss of the peaceful countryside, and started to complain about the excess of population.
That, plus the education act of 1870 had a huge effect on the literacy of the population (W). Not only were the masses expanding, but for the first time in history, the masses were literate.
In ages past, the ability to read books was what separated the intellectuals from the masses. Now, everyone could read books, so the intellectuals had to look for new ways to separate themselves from the masses.
And thus was born the obscure genre of modernist literature--a genre deliberately devised to be as difficult for the reader as possible, in order to separate the intellectuals from the common clerk.
But even more than that, many of these intellectuals flirted with the idea that there were too many people, and that some sort of population control was necessary.
The punchline of the book comes in chapter 9, in which Carey draws a line from the intellectual culture of England in this period straight to Hitler. (Actually it's not really a surprise punchline, because Carey had been making Hitler allusions since chapter 1. But he brings it all home in chapter 9).
Hitler's views, John Carey argues, were actually not as unusual as we'd like to believe. Rather, many of Hitler's views can be found firmly within the mainstream of European intellectual culture of this period.
My Take Aways--And Other Random Observations
Despite everything I said above, it would be an exaggeration to say I gleaned nothing useful from this book. I'll try to detail my main take-aways (and some other random observations) down below.
* Many novels give a picture of the world in which humanity is divided into two groups: the sensitive intelligent people, and the unthinking sheep-like people. This is true especially of the period John Carey talks about, but is also true of other periods.
Often when reading these novels, I have in the past felt a sense of inadequacy. I've felt a sense of panic that I might be one of the unthinking herd, and that I must work harder to be one of the intelligent free-thinking people.
John Carey argues successfully that this view of the world is just literary snobbery.
In reality, there is human drama to be mined from all classes of society. (In later chapters, John Carey contrasts the authors who understood this against the authors who did not.)
Perhaps my main take-away from this book is that in the future, I'm not going to be so taken in by novels that portray the vast majority of people as unthinking herds, and I will no longer spend so much time worrying about whether I'm one of the "special people".
* The population problem has waxed and waned over the decades as a topical issue.
Back in the early 1970s, the population problem was a hot issue with the progressive crowd. (At the time, it was mostly because of Malthusian (W) concerns).
The issue became less popular in the 80s and 90s in liberal crowds, in part because it was recognized that population control measures targeted the most poor and vulnerable (the forced sterilization campaigns in India (W), the one-child policy in China, and the resulting female infanticide (W) ).
Now, the issue is once again topical, since it is increasingly recognized that the amount of humans on the planet is directly tied to the amount of global warming. And it is increasingly looking like global warming is going to wipe us all out.
Reports seem to vary from source to source, and from week to week. But the more alarmist reports that I've heard indicate that we could be heading for a mass extinction before the end of the century.
If you believe that the very future of the species is in danger, than its easy to believe that no preventative measure is too extreme. (And in the privacy of my own mind, I've flirted with some of these ideas myself).
On the other hand, as John Carey shows, these ideas have an ugly history. Hitler was greatly influenced by fears of over-population.
But then what to do?
That will be the biggest question for the future generation.
The postscript for this book plainly states the dilemma. Yes, John Carey says, unchecked population growth is a real issue. But how can we address this without turning into Hitler?
* John Carey writes explicitly about the period 1880-1939. But actually his concerns are still relevant today.
John Carey writes that between 1880 and 1939, the intellectuals were concerned that the masses were breeding out of control, and that this would cause the future intelligence of humanity to diminish.
This is exactly the premise of the 2006 movie Idiocracy, which shows that this idea never went out of fashion. (Full disclosure, I haven't actually seen Idiocracy. But I'm influenced by the 2014 gizmodo article: Idiocracy Is a Cruel Movie and You Should Be Ashamed For Liking It ).
* Also connected with today: A lot of the hand-wringing we see today about the deterioration of popular culture (people complaining about how popular comic book movies are these days, etc) finds parallels in John Carey's book, where he writes about how intellectuals were also concerned about the dominance of low-brow culture in 1880-1939.
John Carey connects some of these themes in his postscript, in which he writes about the current disdain intellectuals have for TV
* This book also reminded me of Chomsky.
Chomsky argues that the intellectuals don't trust democracy, because they don't trust the masses to make decisions.
In many of his books and lectures, Chomsky goes through the history of this idea (example here), and shows that the distrust of the masses has a long history in American intellectualism.
Although John Carey is writing about England, the tone is remarkably similar.
Where they differ, however, is that Chomsky distrusts mass popular media. Since mass popular media is controlled by the corporations, Chomsky sees mass popular media as a form of popular control. Popular media presents a view of the world that is patriotic and friendly to big-businesses. (George Orwell, writing in the 1930s, had the same concern about Boys Weekly magazines.)
John Carey, on the other hand, seems to view distrust of popular media as itself a form of elitism.
Caveats and Criticisms
I'm not an expert, so someone better educated than me will have to critique John Carey.
However, I will say that much of what he has to say lines up perfectly with my old college literature class on Modern British Literature.
In that class, we were also taught that modernists deliberately made their books as difficult to read as possible to distinguish the intellectuals from the common man, just as John Carey says.
And we were also taught that many modernists (like Ezra Pound, Yeats, and T.S. Elliot) had fascist sympathies. Just as John Carey says.
So from what little I know, John Carey's thesis seems to check out.
Nevertheless, I was a little uneasy with his technique of arguing from example. He collects several examples of quotations from intellectuals from this period, and then uses these quotations to support his thesis.
But given all the reams of material that were published during his period, how easy would it be to cherry pick quotations?
Mind you, I have no particular reason to think John Carey was cherry picking. But the thought that it would be so easy to do with a book like this stayed in the back of my mind as I read it.
And indeed, the first two critical reviews of this book that pop on Google (here and here--both from The Independent, for some reason) accuse John Carey of selective quotations among other sins.
There are also a few times when John Carey seems to be struggling just a little bit too hard to make all the facts fit into his thesis.
On page 26, when talking about The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon published in 1895, Carey writes: "It was admired by Sigmund Freud, Ortega y Gasset and, it seems, Adolf Hitler, who probably read it in the German translation."
Interesting choice of words here: "it seems...", "probably..."
My reading of this sentence is: "We have absolutely no proof Hitler came anywhere near this book, but I'm going to insinuate he did anyway because it fits my thesis."
Another stretch comes in the chapters on H.G. Wells. John Carey writes about how frequently crab monsters appear in H.G. Wells's fiction, and surmises: "The psychological origins of this horror in Wells's writing are ultimately impossible to divine. But the hungry, slimy, fishy orifice, threatening to devour and surrounded by what seem like hairs, might, given his resentful feelings about women, prompt a sexual explanation." (p.129)
...Well, maybe. But then again, maybe not. Actually I think John Carey was right the first time. "The psychological origins of this horror in Wells's writing are ultimately impossible to divine." Anything after that is stretching it.
As you can see from the above quotation, the first time John Carey floats this idea he's careful to qualify it as speculation.
But as Carey goes on to write about Wells, this idea pops up several more times, and Carey loses his qualifications. He starts to present the "crab monster=vagina" idea as if it were established fact.
Connections with Other Books I've Read
Regular readers of this blog know that I enjoy pointing out connections between the books that I've reviewed. It's probably of interest to no one else but me, but it amuses me to keep track of it. (Feel free to skip this section).
* I mentioned it above, but I'll repeat it for this section--two chapters are on H.G. Wells in which (among other books) the themes of The War of the Worlds, and The Time Machineare analyzed.
* This was actually a very useful book to read after Lady Chatterley's Lover, because it really helped to put Lady Chatterley's Lover in context.
While reading Lady Chatterley's Lover, I couldn't really understand why D.H. Lawrence was going on and on about the transformation of the English countryside.
John Carey puts this in context perfectly, and explains that the vanishing countryside was the preeminent preoccupation of English intellectuals of the period.
It's actually somewhat puzzling that John Carey doesn't quote from Lady Chatterley's Lover more, since D.H. Lawrence's obsession with the changing landscape so perfectly illustrates his thesis. But he only makes reference to Lady Chatterley's Lover once, and that reference is about the social class aspect of the book and not the land.
Carey does spend more time on D.H. Lawrence's other writings, however, and mentions his flirtation with fascist ideas (something also touched on in the introduction to my copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover).
* E.M. Forster, another author I've recently read, also gets mentioned a lot.
I gave Forster's views on race-relations a very sympathetic write-up in my review, but according to John Carey, Forster was another English intellectual snob who despised the masses.
The whole reason Forster was so interested in India, according to John Carey, is because he found the Indian peasants more exotic and thus interesting than the English masses.
* George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flyingis another book that I'm surprised John Carey didn't make more use of--it so perfectly fits in with his themes. But John Carey only mentions it once on page 10.
John Carey spends about 5 pages analyzing Orwell's attitude towards the poor (p.39-45) in which he quotes from some of George Orwell's essays, 1984, Homage to Catalonia, and Down and Out in Paris and London.
*Ayn Rand is noticeable by her absence--her obsession with the supermen distinguishing themselves from the unthinking unfeeling herds would have fit in exactly with John Carey's thesis. Presumably she was excluded because she was writing in America, and because she published just slightly outside the range of John Carey's selected dates. (The Fountainhead was published in 1943).
* Stevenson's Treasure IslandandDr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are both mentioned as examples of the kind of adventure stories that started replacing serious literature with the advent of mass literarcy. As is Jack London.
* In the conflict between high art and low art, Shakespeare is repeatedly mentioned as an example of high art.
* Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock - Holmes are mentioned frequently as counter-points to the modernist snobs. Sherlock Holmes stories actually targeted the growing middle class, and treated them like real human beings.
* Rudyard Kipling is mentioned as another writer who was actually sympathetic to the middle-class clerks.
* Jules Vernes and Victor Hugo are listed as examples of two high-brow authors published in the middle-class magazine Tit-Bits * War and Peace is given as an example of the type of book that Wyndham Lewis thought was dangerous for the masses to read.
* Arnold Bennett, one of the authors John Carey examines, is quoted as viewing The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment as among the "supreme marvels of the modern world". Turgenev is also mentioned as one of Arnold Bennet's favorite authors.
* One of the scenes in Arnold Bennett's book that John Carey quotes involves one character asking another if they had read Zola's La Debacle. The other character had not, but had lived through the actual Paris Commune instead.
* In her autobiography, Emma Goldman mentions several times how fond she was of Nietzche's work, and what an impact Nietzche made on her.
According to John Carey, Nietzche was a terrible person, but John Carey does mention (on page 4) that many of Nietzche's progressive fans read him selectively. (I've actually not read Nietzche, so I can't comment).
* John Carey also talks about Graham Greene, and Greene's unique version of Catholicism (which John Carey views as another type of snobbery).
Video Review
Video review here and embedded below. (Not one of my better videos admittedly. For whatever reason I had a hard time keeping my train of thought together on this one. This is the danger of doing unscripted videos.)
Like The Time Machine, I had read an abridged
and simplified children’s version of The War
of the Worlds as a child.And, like The Time Machine, and many other classic
books I encountered in simplified children’s versions, for years afterwards I considered War of the Worlds as already read.
But
part of the journey to adulthood is that at a certain point in your life, the
literary snob in you suddenly kicks in and you realize, “Well, I haven’t really
read that book.Not really.Unless I read the original 1898 actual text
by H.G. Wells himself, I shouldn’t count this as already read.”(One of the jobs of adulthood is to go back
and actually read the original versions of all those classic books that you
read - abridged - versions - of - as - children).
In
addition to the abridged version of this book, like everyone else in the world
I’m also familiar with this novel through its various Hollywood
adaptations.As a youngster, I was a
huge fan of the 1953 George Pal movie of War
of the Worlds (W), which I first saw when I was about 10 years
old.And I saw the more recent Steven
Spielberg version of this movie in 2005 (W).And then there are all the Hollywood
films that are clearly stealing from War
of the Worlds, but appear under different names—too numerous to list here.
The
Review
A couple
months back I gave a rave review to The
Time Machine, but I have to confess that I didn’t enjoy The War of the Worlds quite so much.
It
wasn’t a bad little book.It was quite
readable.But it just didn’t intrigue my
imagination as much as The Time Machine did.(Perhaps my expectations were too high after
reading The Time Machine.Maybe I would have given this book a more positive
review had I read it first.)
The War of the Worlds started a whole new
genre—that of the Martian invasion storyline—which has been since picked up by
many other novelists, pulp writers, and Hollywood
screenwriters.
But
the problem with books that start their own genre is that they become victims
of their own success.Now that the basic
story line has been done to death by a million other writers, it’s hard to go
back and approach the original story with the same sense of excitement that
must have thrilled its original readers back in 1897.
I
mean, even if you’ve never encountered this book before, you already know all
the beats of the storyline before you even open to page one.Mysterious visitors from outer-space
arrive.At first, no one has any idea
what their intentions are, and scientists speculate hopefully about a new era
of peaceful cooperation between the two worlds.Then, suddenly, the Martians begin to attack the unsuspecting
humans.They possess technology far in
advance of anything we humans have.The
army and the navy are quickly called out to deal with the Martian threat, but the
Martians quickly obliterate all our human armies.As humans become more and more desperate, we
throw more and more powerful weapons at the Martians, but each successive
attack only reveals that the Martians are invincible to any human weapon.
I’ve
seen this story so many times before, I’m slightly bored with it now.As the British army assembled to fight the
Martians in The War of the Worlds, I
began to lose interest.I already knew
that no weapon the British army could launch at the Martian
would have any effect.That’s simply the
rules of the genre.
None
of this is to take anything away from H.G. Wells, of course.It’s not his fault that he’s been imitated to
death.But it does affect the reading
experience for the modern reader, I’m afraid.
On
the plus side, the narration and the prose are quite readable.And the book is pretty short as well—my
edition was only 162 pages.So its one
of those books that’s probably worth picking up and reading just to say you’ve
read it.And the original The War of the Worlds is interesting as a
time piece.Since I grew up in the Hollywood age, I’m used to seeing American tanks and
airforce battle the monsters.It is a
bit of a novelty to see this same story played out in Victorian Britain, with
19th Century technology and artillery being arrayed against the Martian
invaders.
Also,
once the British army has been destroyed, and the Martians establish their
complete dominance over England,
then the book becomes more interesting.There are some great scenes of chilling claustrophobia where the
narrator, and his companion, a curate [priest] are hiding from the Martians and
are trapped in a house for days while the curate goes insane.(There are similarly chilling scenes in the
2005 Spielberg movie, and I had completely forgotten that those scenes are
straight out of the book.)
Other
Notes:
Colonialism
and Invasion Literature
This book
was written during the height of the imperialistic era.(In 1898, when it was first published, the
Scramble for Africa was in full swing.)It’s hard not to see the Marian colonization of Britain as an allegory for Britain’s
colonization of everywhere else.[Although
the book is called The War of the Worlds,
the Martians only get as far as invading and occupying Britain.]And if this message wasn’t obvious enough,
the subtext becomes text, and the narrator explicitly draws attention to the
parallel in the opening chapter:
“…before we judge of them [the Martians]
too harshly we must remember what
ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon
animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races.
The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of
existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space
of fifty years.Are we such apostles of
mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?” (from
Chapter 1).
The
modern reader will of course cringe at phrases like “inferior races” and human “likeness”
used to refer to non-whites.But the
assumption of inferiority is the whole point of the argument.Even if
we accept 19th Century racial inferiority theory, that still wouldn’t give the
Europeans the right to go in and take the land from the native inhabitants
simply because the Europeans are more advanced.Or rather, if it did give them the right, then the British would have to
accept the right of the more yet advanced Martians to come and conquer Britain.
So the
lens of anti-colonialist literature is one way to view this book.
The other
way to view this book is as an example of “Invasion Literature”
The
phenomenon of Invasion Literature (W) was mentioned in The Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham.*“Invasion Literature” is a genre that became
very popular in Britain during the period from 1870 to 1914, in which the story
revolves around Britain being invaded and subdued by another country (often a
fictional country, but usually a German speaking fictional country.)
Wikipedia
(W) classifies The War of the
Worlds as belonging to the genre of invasion literature, and playing on the
paranoias common at that time, but with the twist of making the invaders extraterrestrial.(The good folks at Cracked.com also place The War of the Worlds as an outgrowth of 19th
Century “Invasion Literature” [LINK HERE].)
It’s
an odd phenomenon for an imperialistic country, at the height of their global
power, to indulge in paranoid fantasies about being conquered by their rivals.After centuries of empty boasts, the years
1870 to 1914 were when the British Empire finally actually did rule
the sea.In other words, they were far less likely to be invaded and conquered
from 1870 to 1914 than in any other period of their history before or
since.And yet it was precisely at that
historical time period that they became obsessed with imagining the invasion of
Britain.
Perhaps,
just as only rich people can be paranoid about losing their wealth, and only
beautiful people can be paranoid about losing their beauty, perhaps only a
nation at the height of its power can really be paranoid about losing that
power, and being conquered by its rivals.
(Although
that being said, I suppose one could also take the opposite interpretation, and
read Invasion Literature as a sign of security.If Invasion Literature is read not as realistic commentary, but simply
as escapist fiction, then perhaps you could argue it can only be popular in
countries that know themselves to be secure against invasion.One could easily imagine that in present day Ukraine or Iraq fictional invasion stories
would not be extremely popular at the moment.)
It
may be stretching things somewhat, but it’s tempting to look at some of the Hollywood films from the period of American dominance,
and see modern versions of this Invasion Literature.The 1987 television miniseries Amerika (W), for example.Or the original Red Dawn (W).Or the
re-make of Red Dawn, in
which American invasion paranoia hit all time ridiculous levels, and imagined
North Korea, a country which can’t even conquer it’s own peninsula, invading
and subduing the United States.
And,
if the original The War of the Worlds can
be taken as an example of invasion literature with an extra-terrestrial twist,
perhaps the last 50 years of alien invasion movies from Hollywood can be interpreted the same
way.(In The War of the Worlds, only Britain is invaded and conquered by
the Martians.In Hollywood films, it is
always the United States
that bears the brunt of the alien invasion—no Hollywood
film ever shows the Chinese struggling against alien invaders.)
[Note: *
At least I think it was in The Scramble for Africa
that I first read about Invasion Literature, although I can’t actually find the
passage right now.At any rate, it was
in one of the books I’ve read recently.]
Religion
Since H.G.
Wells was a die-hard atheist, I suppose it’s not surprising that he makes the
Curate [priest] into a weak-minded and sniveling character.
It’s
a cheap shot of course, and doesn’t harm the doctrines of Christianity at
all.For one thing, the character is
straight out of Well’s imagination, and Well’s presents no evidence that
priests are like this in real life.Much
like Aesop’s fable about The Lion and The
Statue [LINK HERE], a Christian writer would have turned the
atheist into the weak-minded coward, and neither would have proved anything.
(Although I should add that according
to Wikipedia, all of the characters in this novel were based on H.G. Wells’s real
life neighbors, and he got some enjoyment out of killing them off in his
fiction (W).So it's possible the
character of the cowardly Curate is just pure mischief and not an attempt at a
serious philosophical point.)
Similarly,
when the Curate’s breaks down because the Martian invasion has shattered his
faith in God’s protection, it is also not a valid philosophical point for the
real world.In the real world, the
Martians have not invaded, so the point is meaningless.
“What does it mean?” he [the Curate] said.“What do these things mean?”
I stared at him and made no answer.
He extended a thin white hand and
spoke in almost a complaining tone.
“Why are these things permitted?
What sins have we done?The morning
service was over, I was walking through the roads to clear my brain for the
afternoon and then—fire, earthquake, death!As if it were Sodom and Gomorrah!All our work undone, all the work—What are these Martians?”
“What are we?” I answered, clearing
my throat.
…
“All the work—all the Sunday schools—What
have we done—What has Weybridge done?Everything gone—everything destroyed.The church!We rebuilt it only
three years ago. Gone! Swept out of existence!Why?
…
“This must be the beginning of the end,” he [the
Curate] said, interrupting me.“The end! The great and terrible day of the
Lord!When men shall call upon the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them
and hide them—hide them from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne!”
…
“Be a man!” said I.“You are scared out of your wits!What good is religion if it collapses under
calamity?Think of what earthquakes and
floods, wars and volcanoes have done before to men! Did you think God had
exempted Weybridge?He is not an
insurance agent.”
[From Chapter 13].
In
the real world, of course, it’s not a useful conversation to ask why God
permitted a fictional alien invasion in a fictional novel.
However,
as the narrator indicates, one can point to many natural disasters in real
history that brought great death and destruction on human society, and ask why
God permitted those.
That
would be the subject for another book.
But
then again, that book’s already been written.Candide by Voltaire (W) is, among other things, one long discussion about how a good God
could have allowed the great 1755 earthquake in Lisbon (W) to kill so many people.
I’m skeptical of this claim myself.The two books are nothing alike.(One is an invasion story, the other is a
sword-and-sandal adventure story transferred onto Mars).I don’t think you could argue that one influenced
the other unless you take the view that every book that involves Mars in any way
owes some sort of debt to H.G. Wells (which, actually, does seems to be what Wikipedia
is arguing.)
* For a review of the War of the Worlds musical, see HERE.
* For a very intelligent breakdown of all
the strengths and weaknesses of the 2005 Spielberg War of the Worlds, see this review HERE and HERE.(For my money, this girl is the most
intelligent movie reviewer on the Internet.Can’t recommend her highly enough.)
