WC Archive

Hmm - I wonder how the book treats Edison, considering he had some rather questionable methods and ways of dealing with people and animals.

Tesla, on the other hand...

It's interesting to note how Wells, being the among the first to depict alien invasion before it became cliche, got it right the first time: we'd be powerless to stop a foe with vastly superior scientifical knowledge.

The only thing that saves the Earth in the end is an intelligence error in the invasion plans. Another character in the book who proposes a guerilla war against the occupation of the Martians is shown as hopelessly naive. And at the end, the narrator of the story leaves open disquieting possibility that the Martians would simply immunize themselves against infection and try to invade again.

Many other science fiction stories that followed on the same issue seemed to miss this point. They'd often unrealisticly minimize the technical gulf between the humans and invaders or they'd naively depict humans has having some vaguely defined quality (Pluck, empathy, capitalism!) that allows them to run rings around the calcified and bureaucratic extraterrestrial invasion force.

I guess this makes sense. Many people prefer to read entertainment with a happy ending but, Wells didn't exactly give us that in his story.

Although I've never read it, it seems like Serviss commits another error in accuracy for the sake of a story. He falls for the "lone mad scientists who invents magically advanced technologies all by themselves" cliche. You find this cliche all the time in badly written science fiction.

This is simply not how science or engineering work. It is true that the pace of scientific advance is accelerating but science is always a vastly collective enterprise. A major reason why technological breakthroughs happen so rapidly now is that we have hugely increased the number of scientists and engineers working on problems--more brains and labor do things faster, especially if they collaborate and share their discoveries.

I think this was one of the main points of James Burke's Connections series--genius matters but it's always in a context. Edison's real genius was his invention of the industrial research lab where all the money made from previous gadgets is plowed right back into hiring more smart folks to invent more gadgets for you.

Hm. Don't know if this is really on topic.

If I remember correctly, the copyright law didn't apply to derivative works in 1898 the way it does today. I remember reading an article once about Alice in Wonderland, and how it gained a lot of visibility (and subsequent popularity) from people writing pastiches of it in the popular press within the first few years after its release. These often used Carroll's characters and settings quite openly.

Couldn't happen today without someone getting sued. Hurrah for progress. :/

the question is nevertheless who gives us the right between animals and humans to differentiate?

...He [Serviss] falls for the "lone mad scientists who invents magically advanced technologies all by themselves" cliche. You find this cliche all the time in badly written science fiction.

Trouble is, this cliche has a factual precedent: Archimedes' defence of Syracuse against the Romans (although he eventually lost)

At the risk of sounding like the Comic Book Guy - ok, too late - How can a sequel to War of the Worlds contain the first reference to a ray gun? The Martians use heat rays in the original novel.