Let's talk about the greatest science fiction story of all time...
Growing up in NZ, we didn't get a TV until I was almost 10, so my first exposure to science fiction was listening to nightly radio broadcasts of War of the Worlds. Leaving things to my imagination made the story all the more real & terrifying!
War of the Worlds is iconic. The story still stands the test of time today, making it a classic of science fiction
"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own..."
"...that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water"
“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.”
(H.G. Wells captures so much depth within the novel, like this passing slight at unrestrained capitalism) “The man was running away with the rest, and selling his papers for a shilling each as he ran—a grotesque mingling of profit and panic.”
“This isn't a war," said the artilleryman. "It never was a war, any more than there's war between man and ants.”
H.G. Wells uses his story to provide social commentary with “we should remember how repulsive our carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit” ..and.. “Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity,” ..and.. “What was needed now was not bravery, but circumspection.”
And this raises an interesting point... science does not stand aloft from society. Science is an extension of society. Our desire to conqueror space should not come at the expense of our humanity!
“We must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior [people]... a war of extermination waged by European immigrants... the Martians warred in the same spirit”
(120 year old spoiler alert) the ending is classic hard scifi, drawing on known science rather than fantasy, with the aliens being destroyed by Earth's microbes. Even now, this is a far more plausible & satisfactory ending than Independence Day or Oblivion (both of which I loved)
"...there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow..."
Science fiction IS social commentary.

Consider this from War of the Worlds. “With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter.”

That could have been written about us TODAY!
I've been criticized for including politics in my novels, but what people fail to realize is the absence of politics is a political statement in itself—I think HG Wells understood that. In the same way, space exploration & space observation is ALWAYS in the context of us on Earth
What are your thoughts on War of the Worlds and how it has shaped our thinking about the possibility of life in outer space?
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