What happens when civilization discovers that it isn’t nearly as secure as it thought?
In this feature edition of The Common Room, we follow The War of the Worlds across more than half a century of storytelling: from H. G. Wells’s original 1898 novel, through Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre’s legendary 1938 radio broadcast, to the 1955 Lux Radio Theatre production starring Dana Andrews.
The Martians remain. Almost everything else changes.
For Wells, the invasion descends upon the confident world of Victorian Britain, turning the experience of empire back upon the imperial power itself. Humanity suddenly confronts an enemy whose technology makes its armies and achievements seem almost insignificant.
Forty years later, Orson Welles discovered something new and frightening: radio itself could become part of the story. Dance music gives way to bulletins. Reporters interrupt the program. Officials struggle to explain the inexplicable. The invasion doesn’t seem to be happening in a novel. It seems to be happening now.
Then comes 1955. The audience has lived through Pearl Harbor, World War II, Hiroshima and the dawn of the atomic age. Lux Radio Theatre, with Dana Andrews, brings The War of the Worlds into that new American imagination.
Three eras. Three kinds of fear. One question running beneath them all:
How secure is civilization, really?
And then there is Wells’s extraordinary ending.
The greatest machines mankind has ever encountered are not defeated by greater machines. The Martians are brought down by some of the smallest living things on Earth.
Perhaps that’s why The War of the Worlds still has something to say to us.
When the great machines fail, what small things have we forgotten to notice?
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