A Particular Bit of Science In Wells' "War of the Worlds" (1894)

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

I haven't read in Wells' WOTW in a long time, and when I went to it just now (reading and listening) I was surprised at how quickly the Mayday Martians element evolved.  We get to it by the end of the very first paragraph:  

• "At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the 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 early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment."

I was also surprised by the appearance of some tech references, including a dated reference to an article in Nature magazine (2 August 1894).  The Nature article references a "strange light" which Wells uses to his own world-stabbing ends, and he gives his story some credibility by dragging in a real-life background to the possibilities of his imaginations.

• “Had there been evidence that the light was outside the disc the strange appearance might be due to a comet in the same line of sight as the planet. If we assume the light to be on the planet itself then it must either have a physical or human origin...” (And by “human” here the editor no doubt means extra-terrestrial, or biological, or intelligent life form.)

I'm not a big sci fi reader, but in my experience I've never seen a tale woven using the names of Perrotin and Schiaparelli, though I have no seen them used in the plot setup thickening agent in WOTW. (By the way Wells mentions the "palpitating" work of "Lavelle of Java" though he must have meant "Javelle", who was Stephane Javelle, the assistant to Perrotin of the Nice Observatory.)

On the “strange light”:

 

Source: Nature, volume 50, August 2, 1894