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A review by grayduck
The First H.G. Wells Omnibus: The Invisible Man/War of the Worlds/The Island of Dr Moreau by H.G. Wells
Reviewed 4/21/2005
Annotation:
Life on Mars has become difficult for the Martians. Having sucked their planet dry, they’ve focused on the lush, undefended nineteenth-century Earth as their next home in the galaxy. Humanity is completely unprepared for an alien invasion – no mass communication, no disaster plans, nothing. The people of Earth watch in confusion and horror as strange metallic cylinders fall from the heavens. Mechanical monsters kill indiscriminately and swarm over the countryside. The reader follows one man’s struggle to stay alive as the world collapses around him. Will the human race be able to defend itself against the Martians superior technologies such as the heat ray and poisonous clouds, or are they doomed to be enslaved by the marauding invaders? H.G. Wells introduced the world to such a scenario with War of the Worlds, creating a genre and a vision of life in the universe that impacts science and entertainment even today.
Real Review:
I did enjoy War of the Worlds. I had a hard time wrapping some parts of it around my mind – for example, an alien invasion in a world without mass communication. Nobody knew what was going on. People were crawling up to the spacecraft and kicking it, people were living normal lives just outside the reach of the heat rays. If this were to happen nowadays…well, you know what would happen. Skyfox 9 and Captain Bobby Ratliff would be circling the area, the Powers That Be would be analyzing what the economic and financial effects of the invasion would be – or perhaps the world would just dissolve into a haze of frenzied panic and we’d all freak out and look to our leaders for guidance – and then we'd have a Dr. Strangelove scene.
Now I’m just ranting. But you know what I mean? Something that happens on a global scale without global communication – it’s hard to fathom nowadays. I was impressed by a lot of other things in this book too – but this is the aspect that will stick in my memory.
Annotation:
Life on Mars has become difficult for the Martians. Having sucked their planet dry, they’ve focused on the lush, undefended nineteenth-century Earth as their next home in the galaxy. Humanity is completely unprepared for an alien invasion – no mass communication, no disaster plans, nothing. The people of Earth watch in confusion and horror as strange metallic cylinders fall from the heavens. Mechanical monsters kill indiscriminately and swarm over the countryside. The reader follows one man’s struggle to stay alive as the world collapses around him. Will the human race be able to defend itself against the Martians superior technologies such as the heat ray and poisonous clouds, or are they doomed to be enslaved by the marauding invaders? H.G. Wells introduced the world to such a scenario with War of the Worlds, creating a genre and a vision of life in the universe that impacts science and entertainment even today.
Real Review:
I did enjoy War of the Worlds. I had a hard time wrapping some parts of it around my mind – for example, an alien invasion in a world without mass communication. Nobody knew what was going on. People were crawling up to the spacecraft and kicking it, people were living normal lives just outside the reach of the heat rays. If this were to happen nowadays…well, you know what would happen. Skyfox 9 and Captain Bobby Ratliff would be circling the area, the Powers That Be would be analyzing what the economic and financial effects of the invasion would be – or perhaps the world would just dissolve into a haze of frenzied panic and we’d all freak out and look to our leaders for guidance – and then we'd have a Dr. Strangelove scene.
Now I’m just ranting. But you know what I mean? Something that happens on a global scale without global communication – it’s hard to fathom nowadays. I was impressed by a lot of other things in this book too – but this is the aspect that will stick in my memory.