Later That Night …

Grove Koger

As I explained in my October 30 post, one of the first science fiction novels I read as a boy was H.G. Wells’ famous War of the Worlds. In addition to its classic status, it served as the basis for a famous, make that infamous, radio broadcast. The paragraphs below conclude my description of that night and discuss the event from the perspective of Idaho’s capital city. The article originally appeared in the September/October 2014 issue of Greenbelt Magazine as “A Night to Remember.”

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“It’s Coming This Way”

The end of the cylinder was seen to be rotating, and listeners heard the clank of a huge piece of falling metal. And then, on cue, Phillips described “something wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake.” There was a “humped shape,” a “jet of flame” that set everything afire. “It’s coming this way now,” Phillips announced breathlessly, “about 20 yards to my right—”

Phillips would not be heard from again, but an announcer brought on the commander of the New Jersey state militia to report that several counties in the area had been placed under martial law. There followed a series of self-assured comments from a Captain Lansing who described the scene as thousands of militiamen advanced on the cylinder. But then the captain’s voice turned anxious as he watched something rise out of the pit, something “rearing up on a sort of metal framework” and turning its heat ray upon the troops …

Meanwhile

Here in Boise, authorities were deluged with calls from worried residents. And no wonder. The program they were listening to was describing “one of the most startling defeats ever suffered by any army in modern times.” More of the mysterious cylinders had hit the earth! New York City was being evacuated as the Martians strode across the countryside in their monstrous tripods! Miraculously, Professor Pierson was back on the air, broadcasting from an empty house and wondering whether he might be the “last living man on earth.”

As the Idaho Statesman would report breathlessly the next day, “hundreds of radio listeners in Boise and vicinity verged on hysteria.” According to the paper, four of its reporters spent the hour of the broadcast trying to reassure frightened members of the public. One hysterical caller said that “hundreds of death machines” from Mars had “landed in New Jersey!” Another screamed, “They’ll be here in Boise by dawn!”

In Newark, New Jersey, hundreds of men and women were said to have run through the streets, their heads wrapped in towels and handkerchiefs to ward off the effects of the Martians’ poison gas. In Birmingham, Alabama, the pious gathered in groups to pray. Closer to home, in Concrete, Washington, the power went out during the broadcast. For a time, according to the Statesman, the town was “frantic.”

But Wait—

Unlike the Statesman, the Boise Capital News reported that radio’s “super-catastrophe” didn’t create a panic in Boise. “Those who were accustomed to listening intelligently and thoughtfully …  enjoyed the program, went off to bed and untroubled sleep.”

It’s difficult now to determine who was right, but studies suggest that things weren’t as bad as the Statesman claimed. In Getting It Wrong, W. Joseph Campbell argues that “most listeners … were neither frightened nor unnerved.” Instead, says Campbell, the broadcast gave American newspapers an “irresistible opportunity” to rebuke the new medium of radio, which was competing with the papers for advertisers. Much the same relationship exists today between older media and the Internet.

Just as we can’t be sure of the extent of the “panic” that October night, we can’t be sure of what expectations Welles may have had. Not surprisingly, however, his sputtering Mercury Theatre got a new lease on life when Campbell’s Soup agreed to sponsor 13 more episodes. Given the broadcast’s date—the night before Halloween, remember—it was a lucky number indeed.

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The illustrations I’ve added to my article were drawn by Brazilian artist Henrique Alvim Corrêa for the 1906 edition of Wells’ novel.

A Night to Remember

Grove Koger

One of the first science fiction novels I read as a boy was H.G. Wells’ famous War of the Worlds. It’s never been surpassed as an account of interplanetary invasion, and I doubt that it ever will be. But among its other claims to fame, it served as the basis for a famous, perhaps infamous, radio broadcast. This article, which discusses that event from the perspective of Idaho’s capital city, originally appeared in the September/October 2014 issue of Greenbelt Magazine. Given its length, I’ll post its conclusion tomorrow.

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October 30, 1938, was a cool, rainy Sunday in Boise. It was also the day before Halloween, a fact that might have raised suspicions about what took place that night. But as events unfolded with ever-increasing rapidity, it must have been difficult to think clearly.

“Merely a Coincidence”

Radio listeners who had tuned in a few minutes late to The Mercury Theatre on the Air may have been intrigued to hear a report that “several explosions of incandescent gas” had been observed on Mars. The broadcast then returned to a program of dance music, but was interrupted again by another announcement. Listeners should stand by for an interview with one Professor Pierson, a “noted astronomer” with the Princeton Observatory.

Shortly afterward commentator Carl Phillips began his interview with Pierson, who was apparently at that very moment staring through a huge telescope at the red planet. He assured Phillips that while the chances of finding intelligent beings on Mars were a “thousand to one,” he could not account for the explosions.

At that point someone handing a message to Pierson, who examined it and then helpfully passed it on. At 9:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, Phillips read aloud, a seismograph had registered a “shock of almost earthquake intensity” near Princeton. The professor speculated that the shock was probably due to a meteorite of “unusual size” and dismissed its arrival as “merely a coincidence.”

Things were starting to get interesting …

Mr. Welles and Mr. Wells

What many listeners failed to note was that the director of The Mercury Theatre, a 23-year-old American named Orson Welles, was staging a dramatization of The War of the Worlds by British writer H.G. Wells. As it turned out, the novel proved ideal for the director’s purposes, although he moved its setting from England to the east coast of the United States.

Even now, decades later, one sentence that Welles adapted from the novel’s opening stands out. “Across an immense ethereal gulf,” he intoned ominously, “minds that to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”

Of course if you had tuned in late, as many listeners had, you would have missed the explanation. (And you may not have noticed that “Professor Pierson” sounded a lot like Orson Welles.) Some 40 minutes into the program there was a brief announcement identifying the dramatization for what it was, but by then there was plenty of cause for alarm.

It seems that a “huge, flaming object” had landed near Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, where Phillips had driven with Pierson. Half-buried in a pit was a “huge cylinder” that the ever-helpful Pierson estimated to be about 30 yards in diameter. There was a crowd that the police couldn’t contain. There was a “curious humming sound” that seemed to come from inside the cylinder. Then there was a scraping sound.

TO BE CONTINUED

The marvelous illustrations I’ve added to my article were drawn by Brazilian artist Henrique Alvim Corrêa for the 1906 edition of Wells’ novel.