| Location | Tucson |
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How about a little background first:
High magnification has revealed what appear to be the fossils of filamentous bacteria in a rock from Mars. It came to Earth as a meteorite, discovered in an Antarctic site which made contamination with Earth organisms unlikely. Ergo, there was life on Mars. Maybe, there is life on Mars. But what kind of life?
One can almost hear the voice of Orson Welles in his famous Halloween 1938 broadcast of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, “We know now that in the early days of the 20th century...Minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic regarded the earth with envious eyes, and slowly drew their plans against us.”
Thus the stage could be set again for what was surely the most successful of all horror dramatizations, if success is measured in terms of thousands sent screaming into the night.
As far as we know, there are no other intellects in the cosmos, vast, cool, unsympathetic, or otherwise. But that does not prevent each and every diaphanous strand of evidence from weaving in our collective imagination a tapestry of civilizations vastly superior to our own. So, when Columbia Broadcasting System's Mercury Theater staged a radio version of Wells' thriller as a simulated newscast, its effect was to send thousands across the nation into a panicked frenzy, thousands who believed that they were facing an invincible army of Martian invaders.
The show aired coast-to-coast over ABC from New York on the evening of October 30, 1938. Coincidentally, just an hour and a half before War of the Worlds went on, electric lights alternately dimmed and brightened in Bergen County, New Jersey, creating a buildup for terror.
Most listeners ignored or missed the play's introduction. They failed to associate the play with the program listings. They ignored three announcements emphasizing the fictional nature of the play. The show went on the air at eight o'clock, and by 8:15 the nation was convinced of the reality of a Martian invasion.
In New York City, families rushed out of their houses, wet handkerchiefs over their faces, to flee what they believed to be a gas attack. A team of geologists traveled to Dutch Neck, New Jersey, five miles north of Princeton, to investigate the reported meteor fall that had brought the alien invaders. (In Wells' story, the Martians arrived in metal cylinders which descended through our atmosphere like shooting stars.) All they found was a gaggle of sightseers, also looking. The invasion seemed so real to many that they contacted police stations and newspaper offices to say that they had actually seen it. Later, one family was found huddled in a field, waiting for the end.
We’re thinking party. It will be, after all, the 70th anniversary in October. Suppose you tool over in your 1936 Hudson. All we need is a few antiques, a few fedoras, some 1930s party lights, the best food in the solar system (some imagination needed here), and a DJ to read the original script, or a version of it. Somebody come as a Martian. Got a walking machine? Maybe we can convince a few of the guys from the University of Arizona to bring over a model of the Phoenix lander and try talking us out of our hysteria.
Who wants to play?
High magnification has revealed what appear to be the fossils of filamentous bacteria in a rock from Mars. It came to Earth as a meteorite, discovered in an Antarctic site which made contamination with Earth organisms unlikely. Ergo, there was life on Mars. Maybe, there is life on Mars. But what kind of life?
One can almost hear the voice of Orson Welles in his famous Halloween 1938 broadcast of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, “We know now that in the early days of the 20th century...Minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic regarded the earth with envious eyes, and slowly drew their plans against us.”
Thus the stage could be set again for what was surely the most successful of all horror dramatizations, if success is measured in terms of thousands sent screaming into the night.
As far as we know, there are no other intellects in the cosmos, vast, cool, unsympathetic, or otherwise. But that does not prevent each and every diaphanous strand of evidence from weaving in our collective imagination a tapestry of civilizations vastly superior to our own. So, when Columbia Broadcasting System's Mercury Theater staged a radio version of Wells' thriller as a simulated newscast, its effect was to send thousands across the nation into a panicked frenzy, thousands who believed that they were facing an invincible army of Martian invaders.
The show aired coast-to-coast over ABC from New York on the evening of October 30, 1938. Coincidentally, just an hour and a half before War of the Worlds went on, electric lights alternately dimmed and brightened in Bergen County, New Jersey, creating a buildup for terror.
Most listeners ignored or missed the play's introduction. They failed to associate the play with the program listings. They ignored three announcements emphasizing the fictional nature of the play. The show went on the air at eight o'clock, and by 8:15 the nation was convinced of the reality of a Martian invasion.
In New York City, families rushed out of their houses, wet handkerchiefs over their faces, to flee what they believed to be a gas attack. A team of geologists traveled to Dutch Neck, New Jersey, five miles north of Princeton, to investigate the reported meteor fall that had brought the alien invaders. (In Wells' story, the Martians arrived in metal cylinders which descended through our atmosphere like shooting stars.) All they found was a gaggle of sightseers, also looking. The invasion seemed so real to many that they contacted police stations and newspaper offices to say that they had actually seen it. Later, one family was found huddled in a field, waiting for the end.
We’re thinking party. It will be, after all, the 70th anniversary in October. Suppose you tool over in your 1936 Hudson. All we need is a few antiques, a few fedoras, some 1930s party lights, the best food in the solar system (some imagination needed here), and a DJ to read the original script, or a version of it. Somebody come as a Martian. Got a walking machine? Maybe we can convince a few of the guys from the University of Arizona to bring over a model of the Phoenix lander and try talking us out of our hysteria.
Who wants to play?
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Tucson
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