The Halloween episode of the Mercury Theatre “On The Air” series on the 30th of October, 1938 and aired over the CBS Radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds. The first half of the 60-minute broadcast was a series of news bulletins, which suggested to many listeners that a Martian invasion was in progress. (Because the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a ‘sustaining show’ [without sponsorship], the broadcast had no commercials). This resulted in people who fled their homes, and terrified millions of other listeners. The news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode launched Welles to fame. It was and will always be a crowing achievement of his genius.
The first Tripod from H.G. Wells’ mind has now place of honor in the town it destroyed: Woking, England. This War of The Worlds sculpture is certainly a beautiful thing, giving respect and a tip of the hat to great scifi writers from the past. In that same vein, I think there should be a giant sandworm looped in and out of a desert somewhere for Frank Herbert, an army of robots lined up, terracotta warrior style, as a tribute to Isaac Asimov, and even Liberty’s head on some beach to give a shout out to Planet of the Apes. If only we took scifi a bit more seriously.
