Talk:The War of the Worlds/Archive 2

Radio broadcast?
I'm sorry, but the radio broadcast has to be mentioned in this article, otherwise it looks stupid and incomplete. The Orson Welles broadcast is undeniably what most people associate with the novel, and while I'm not saying an entire section need be devoted to it, at the very least add a line referencing it, with a throw to the applicable section of the Adaptations article which most visitors won't think to look for under the links section at the very bottom of this thing. 68.146.64.9 (talk) 16:47, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Given its age most people will know of the Spielburg film rather then a 80 year old radio broadcast.Slatersteven (talk) 16:51, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Pure speculation that most people will know of the Spielberg film over the radio broadcast, let alone the classic-iconic original 1950's George Pal movie adaption of the novel. HammerFilmFan (talk) 23:41, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

EXACTLY! Why was it not mentioned that it scared hundreds/thousands of people in the 20th century over a radio broadcast? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.0.116.145 (talk • contribs) 01:15, 19 February 2011‎


 * I'm trying to forget about the Spielberg film. Optimus Sledge (talk) 23:59, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * The article now contains an "Adaptations" section. --McGeddon (talk) 13:46, 15 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think hundreds/thousands of people were affected by this... but maybe? --The4DGovernment (talk) 20:31, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

The Reception section could do with expansion
I'm sure there's more to say about the critical reception of the book than "received very favourably"... -- Pingumeister(talk) 15:10, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Mistaken reference, to Black/Field?
Since science fiction was my Ph.D area, I was very interested to see the reference here (note 37) to 'Howard D. Black, "Real and Imagined Wars and Armies" in Jane Field (ed.) "The accurate and inaccurate predictions of Early Science Fiction"'. Nowhere else, however, can I find any reference at all to such an article/chapter or indeed volume. Lack of publication details doesn't help. Does the source material actually exist? The quote in question seems remarkably detailed if it doesn't. Then again, the titles of both chapter and book both seem oddly awkward. -- Professor Cortex (talk) 20:44, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Highly Recommend This Page
I found this article quite well written with all areas I was interested in covered in detail without repetition or obvious errors. This is the kind of thing I come to Wikipedia for but find too infrequently.68.178.50.46 (talk) 01:49, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

"H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds (film)"
The usage and primary topic of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds (film) is under discussion, see Talk:H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds (2005 film) -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 08:44, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Plot detail and long sentences
The first half of the plot (I haven't yet looked at the second half) is over-detailed and contains several long sentences. e.g. The creation of a defence-line is the plot element, as it allowed "the narrator to float down the Thames in a boat toward London". That it was composed of (BL 12 inch naval gun Mk VIII) siege guns centred on Richmond and Kingston hills is excessive detail. A lot of readers won't know where Richmond or Kingston are and so will need to click on the links which actively distracts the reader away from the plot. Similarly, the fact the narrator describes the Martians as "big" and "greyish" with "oily brown skin", "the size, perhaps, of a bear", etc. does not progress the plot at all. Quoting the book should be reserved for particularly notable quotes, which these are not, see WP:PLOTSUM.

Convoluted sentences like "After heavy firing from the common and damage to the town from the Heat-Ray which suddenly erupts in the late afternoon, the narrator takes his wife to safety in nearby Leatherhead, where his cousin lives, using a rented, two-wheeled horse cart; he then returns to Woking to return the cart when in the early morning hours a violent thunderstorm erupts." and "This includes the narrator's younger brother, a medical student, also unnamed, who flees to the Essex coast after the sudden, panicked predawn order to evacuate London is given by the authorities, a terrifying and harrowing journey of three days, amongst millions of similar refugees streaming from London.", are way too long, overly detailed, repeat information already given and need to be trimmed/split.

I don't believe my edit removes anything "essential to the readers understanding of a fast moving chronology". On the contrary, by removing distracting minutiae it helps the reader. TwoTwoHello (talk) 10:10, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi. Firstly, just upthread there is a positive recommendation, so the article cannot be doing that badly :)

On a more serious note, when I first came to the WOTW article three years ago, the plot was an utter mess which bore no resemblance to the plot of this classic whatsoever. I reshaped it, so that the original new draft resembled more accurately what actually happens in the book. However, over the years, encrustations, barnacles, additions have been added. The Martian description has no place in the summary. The chaotic "damage to the town from the Heat-Ray which suddenly erupts in the late afternoon, the narrator takes his wife to safety in nearby Leatherhead, where his cousin lives, using a rented, two-wheeled horse cart; he then returns to Woking to return the cart when in the early morning hours a violent thunderstorm erupts." was a mangled reworking of an originally rather well crafted sentence. Similarly "This includes the narrators younger brother, a medical student, also unnamed...a terrifying and harrowing journey of three days, amongst millions of similar refugees streaming from London.", are similar instances. I think the mention of the defence line should stay, as should the Richmond and Kingston links. These are real places, and many readers may actually wish to check them out. We are looking at a complex fast moving chain of events, which destroys the greatest superpower of the age in under 36 hours. I agree to trimming some of the overly rambling sentences, but I would argue that the plot conveys the fast moving urgency of the actual book rather well. For 1898 a blitzkreig is fairly mind blowing. Happy to discuss improvements. Regards Simon, aka Irondome (talk) 19:47, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Repeated sections
What is going on with this article? The "The Coming of the Martians" subsection is repeated twice (the first one without a proper heading), and the "The Earth Under the Martians" subsection is repeated 5 times! 144.32.240.16 (talk) 22:04, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
 * The duplicated content you refer to has been reverted.--JayJasper (talk) 22:10, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Section on copyright and its relationship to a sequel
This is interesting. According to this story from the BBC, a sequel is to be published in 2017 "when the copyright on the original expires". Because the copyright on the original, which was published in book form in 1898, lasts until 31 December 2016. It seems that even though this book was published at the end of the 19th century, under the 1995 copyright law all copyrights of books that were still in copyright in 1925 were retroactively given the life of the author (HG Wells died in 1946) plus 70 years!

Seems a very long time in my view! (BTW ironically in archive 1 (2008) someone dismissively states that this book is now out of copyright....Ooops!) 81.129.95.255 (talk) 17:07, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

It may be out of copyright in other countries where the statute for copright length is not as long as it is in the UK. For example, in New Zealand many books that are still copyright in the UK are no longer copyright in NZ. I think this is also the case for USA which has a shorter copyright period than the UK does. Anyway, it's 4 years after the last comment I'm replying to, and the book is no longer copyrighted in the UK. 82.4.80.121 (talk)

Literary antecedents
It's been a long time since I read Gulliver's Travels but I do not recall the Laputans being considered anything but human--they are a satirical representation of the scientists of the Royal Society. In fact, the name Laputa is suggested by Swift as being partly derived from the idea that their wives get bored with them and engage in affairs with the people below on the ground. Second, while the chracters in Micromegas are indeed from other worlds, they are likewise quite human, one of them having been raised by "the Jesuits" on his world. Both are definitely satire, both can be considerd science fiction, just, but it's clutching a very find straw indeed to make either of these into antecedents for this novel. ZarhanFastfire (talk) 05:19, 13 June 2016 (UTC) I have made some adjustments. Considering Swift is not the source for the statement about the Laputans, I wonder if it was the secondary source cited, speculating on this point. I'd like to see the text supporting Laputans as other-than-human from Swift's novel before that is restored. ZarhanFastfire (talk) 05:28, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Add
Let's add a summary about this book! Ester Dana (talk) 19:37, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * AGF, but what part of the plot doesn't already do that? Chaheel Riens (talk) 20:24, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Surrey and "london"
Surrey is part of London. Parts of surrey are London boroughs (e.g. Kingston-upon-Thames, or Richmond) so why treat them as if they are different somehow. Yes the county extends beyond the London suburbs but it still forms a part of London .. not a separate area outside it. 82.4.80.121 (talk)

The two counties were separate back in Victorian times when this book was written, Kingston and Richmond only became part of London in 1965. Thameslinkrail (talk) 06:29, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Scientific predictions and accuracy
No mention of the Martians' over use of their own planet's resources and the comparison to our own current environmental issues and rampant consumerism? Surely this must have been mentioned in papers and articles somewhere? 209.93.17.230 (talk) 22:25, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Not that I recall.Slatersteven (talk) 17:35, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

The cart
They didn't mention how he borrowed a dogcart and how he was returning it when he encountered the tripod 50.110.174.78 (talk) 03:03, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
 * It's not a really essential or central to the plot. Chaheel Riens (talk) 08:27, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Plot summary word count
Moved from Talk:The War of the Worlds/GA1 with minor formatting adjustments and signatures added. TompaDompa (talk) 22:36, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

At over 1200 words, this is a rather lengthy plot summary. It needs copyediting for conciseness. This is both a question of individual sentences being poorly written and excessive levels of detail. I see that this was brought up on the talk page back in 2015, see Talk:The War of the Worlds/Archive 2. Also brought up there is an overuse of quotes from the novel. TompaDompa (talk) 04:17, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * (by my count - the current plot summary is half that at just over 600 words). Moonhawk (talk) 19:45, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

"The War of the Worlds" in sf magazines
I added the mention that the novel was republished in sf magazines to show its influence on 20th century science fiction (as the quote from the SF Encylopedia was meant to show) and therefore its importance. I agree the Famous Fantastic Mysteries one was less relevant, and it was mostly because the cover photo was already there.

By "even more trivial" I assume @Slatersteven meant compared to the adaptations I cut the other day, but there's already a whole article on them and they are not the subject of this article. CohenTheBohemian (talk) 15:37, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
 * And those republications are not about the story either. As you say, we already quote a source about its importance, just giving a few examples of it being republished does not add to that. Slatersteven (talk) 15:49, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, the republications are about the story - that's what's being republished! And that is necessary to mention its influence on sf in general. It's a small part of establishing the novel's influence and importance.
 * By the way, the SF Encyclopedia quote was in the part I added, so the article doesn't currently include it. CohenTheBohemian (talk) 02:56, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * No it does not, as lots of stories get reprinted. What we would need would be RS saying how important it is, not our wp:or. We already say that, adding a list of magazines it has been reprinted in just adds words. Slatersteven (talk) 10:16, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Forgive me for not understanding your point. The point of listing the 1927 reprint is not that it was reprinted but that the reprinting was why it was influential, and I added a reliable source on this. The 1951 reprint is minor, but it did have a source. I don't see an original research issue in either case. CohenTheBohemian (talk) 11:51, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * "where they were promoted as models for what would soon be called science fiction", also this is not about war of the worlds, it is about Wells. Also, the line does not specially mention war of the worlds. Slatersteven (talk) 12:02, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Why would you mention the republicans at all? 2600:6C5E:5D3F:4DBD:71C5:B3B2:289A:BC7E (talk) 14:34, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I did not. Slatersteven (talk) 14:35, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Rail gun
This looks like speculation (and has already been reverted once, so its inclusion is edit warring). Do RS make the link? Slatersteven (talk) 14:03, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

And now the CN tag has been removed with out a cite being supplied. Slatersteven (talk) 15:39, 21 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm ambivalent here, as I believe that the concept has been applied to theoretical travel, but my belief doesn't count. Actual sourcing to show this is required, and in this article, not in the target.  If it's true, then sourcing should be easy to find by those who wish to keep it in the article.  Chaheel Riens (talk) 16:03, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
 * My point is that the Martian gun (assuming it is one) is not called a rail gun, and these space guns are not carry living tissue. Thus there is no direct link, unless RS say there is one. Slatersteven (talk) 16:09, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
 * To be fair, the inserted text in the article doesn't say that the Martians use a railgun, and makes it clear that electromagnetic technology is an alternative to the cannon type of gun implied by the novel. However, such claims do need sourcing, and on that, we agree.  Chaheel Riens (talk) 16:26, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
 * My point is that this has nothing to do with War of the Worlds, and is thus wp:undue. Slatersteven (talk) 16:30, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The section of the article is discussing the Scientific predictions and accuracy of the book - not the narrative of the book itself.
 * It is stated in this section of the article:
 * "Modern scientific understanding renders this idea impractical, as it would be difficult to control the trajectory of the gun precisely, and the force of the explosion necessary to propel the cylinder from the Martian surface to the Earth would likely kill the occupants."''
 * However the additional text was added to show that this may not necessarily be the case and that, in fact, a space gun type launch system is still very much an area of interest and under active research. 81.145.236.58 (talk) 14:19, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * But did the book predict this? do any sources link the two? Slatersteven (talk) 15:06, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The book predicted a space gun, yes. 81.145.236.58 (talk) 15:37, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * But did the book predict a rail gun? Slatersteven (talk) 15:39, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Why is that relevant. The book didn't say what mechanism was used by the Martians.  I cited the rail gun simply because it is one (of many) technologies that is of particular interest to power a space gun.  The paragraph does not assert that the rail gun was a specific prediction of wells, merely that it is an area of research for human space gun concepts.
 * There are comparisons between the laser and the heat ray further down in the same article - if we are getting into this level of pedantry, then surely we should also take out these references and comparisons, since Wells never mentioned or predicted a laser. We have no idea how the heat ray worked, just as we have no idea how their space gun worked.  It could have been laser or maser technology - just as the space gun could have been using railgun technology or not. 81.145.236.58 (talk) 15:59, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * We are both bludgeoning, it is time for others to chip in. Slatersteven (talk) 15:53, 28 November 2023 (UTC)