Re: My thoughts on WotW (spoilers)

On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 18:52:36 -0400, Barry Margolin
<barmar@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


>
>And the resolution that Wells created is just utterly implausible, too.
>If these aliens are so advanced, how could they not know about the
>possibility of infection from earth germs? Do they not have microbes on
>their world?

Probably not. Remember Wells had them coming from a Mars where almost
all life was extinct except for the plants they brought with them.
With the Martians the only animal life, the primary source of
dangerous disease, cross contagion between species, just didn't
happen. Besides presumably his publishers demanded he not end the
book with the Martians simply wiping out humanity and obviously we
weren't going to beat them militarily. Since the Martian invasion was
fundamentally a metaphor for European colonialism, and since the only
thing that stopped the Europeans was local disease it was a fairly
natural choice for the deus ex machina to save our asses.

We're incredibly primitive compared to them, but as soon
>as we started sending astronauts into space, we made sure to quarantine
>them upon their returns, just in case they brought something bad with
>them.

But the Martians weren't returning. They were fleeing a dying planet,
the standard picture of Mars in the human imagination at that time.
Quarantining themselves from their new world's environment wasn't
really an option. The business with the Martians injecting human
blood into themselves doesn't actually make sense in terms of how they
eat. They didn't bring any Martian animals with them, to inhabit
their areoformed Earth and they showed no signs of wanting to preserve
humans or any other Earth life as a food supply. They were trying to
vaccinate themselves (a technology that was relatively new in HG
Well's time). It just didn't work.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: My thoughts on WotW (spoilers)
    ... >>>And the resolution that Wells created is just utterly implausible, ... >>>alien planet unprotected, even if it had what seemed to be a breathable ... > It could have been NEW microbes that took down the aliens now. ... the Martians themselves may have had a planetwide government for long enough ...
    (rec.arts.sf.movies)
  • Re: Edisons Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss at Project Gutenberg
    ... How is it a direct sequel to Wels' work? ... The martians ... are different than what Wells described. ... In the Serviss Story, they are ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: That Darn Squid God
    ... and H. G. Wells' Martians: versus Great Cthulhu. ... I would have thought HGWells Martians would be nowhere near a match ... I would've thought H.G. Wells' Martians would be MINIONS of Dread Cthulhu. ... [Polite Dragon Smile] ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Phoenix spacecraft humor
    ... H.G Wells' Martians had a group of eight tendrils on either side of their mouths, so I assume they use either base eight or sixteen as far as counting goes. ...
    (sci.space.history)
  • Re: Time Machine revised?
    ... Otherwise H G Wells must really have been a true visionary to come up ... the tides upon the spin of the earth will bring this planet ... to the sun. ... Whether there will be any life on the earth then ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)