In October 1939, news broadcasts cut into regular programming, reporting first of unusual explosions observed on the surface of Mars - dismissed by prominent astronomer Professor Piersen as volcanic activity - and then of an unusual impact which has rocked the tiny New Jersey farm town of Grover's Mill. Reporter Carl Phillips, with Piersen following close behind, races from the Princeton Observatory to Grover's Mill to cover the story, finding that a metallic cylinder has crash-landed. The cylinder opens, and humans catch their first glimpse of life from Mars - moments before the cylinder's occupant kills dozens of people with a deadly heat ray, including Phillips. The area is quickly evacuated and placed under martial law, and reports are heard of more cylinders landing across the United States. The cylinders are now opening up to unleash immense, mobile Martian War Machines onto the Earth, capable of killing thousands with their heat rays, or of wiping out all life with dense clouds of black poisonous gas. Even bombers trying to strafe the War Machines from above can't slow down the Martian invasion. Reporters continue to file eyewitness reports as the War Machines wade across the Hudson River and decimate New York City. In hiding, Professor Piersen keeps a journal of the events he witnesses and survivors he meets, including a wayward militia man who sees the attack as an opportunity to rebuild society...minus a few pesky freedoms, basic rights, and even minus entire groups of the human race. Piersen declines to join the man's reconstruction effort and moves on, until he discovers the one thing that stands a chance of halting the Martian takeover...

"Is there anyone on the air? Is there anyone on the air? Is there... anyone?"

So many volumes have been written about this broadcast and whether or not the reports or true that it panicked mainstream America. I'm not going to even try to compete with the considerable documentation and scholarship that has gone into telling that side of the story, and instead concentrate on my own impressions of the Mercury Theater On The Air's production of War Of The Worlds.

First off, for background's sake, a few factual tidbits are in order. For whatever uproar it may have caused, The War Of The Worlds certainly didn't hurt anyone's career; Welles went on to Hollywood, and so did script writer Howard Koch, who adapted Casablanca for the big screen. It's worth noting that the fake-news-broadcast format - something which has been imitated endlessly since - was apparently suggested by Mercury Theater co-founder John Houseman, who thought it would go over better than an attempt at a more literal adaptation of H.G. Wells' original story. (So too was the "localization" of the story, originally set in England.) According to some sources, Orson Welles wasn't even terribly interested in doing War Of The Worlds for radio, but the unusual format piqued his interest.

As many times as the fake news format has been rehashed in different media, it's remarkably effective here, with little in the way of sound effects. War Of The Worlds coasts along on an ample cushion of the performers' absolute conviction (and their close study of then-recent wartime news broadcasts from England and Europe), and plenty of careful psychological manipulation. There are pauses and extended silences throughout - but when those silences drop abruptly into the middle of suspenseful scenes, it heightens the suspense even more, for it usually means that an eyewitness reporter has just described the last thing he'll ever see.

Roughly 2/3 of the way into the program, however, an announced lets us know that we're listening to a radio dramatization, says we'll be back after these messages, and when we return to the show, the remainder of The War Of The Worlds is, for all intents and purposes, an Orson Welles monologue. The shift is jarring, but somewhat necessary, as New York and all of the reporters relaying the action there have been wiped out (a mental picture which has become, disturbingly, much easier to envision in ways that the original cast and crew could never have foreseen). The most effective part of this segment is where Piersen meets up with a survivor whose ideas for rebuilding society verge on militaristic at best, and fascist at worst. This is the closest that The War Of The Worlds comes to making a political statement; the original novel was about the fall of the rigid Victorian mindset, but the radio show preyed on the fears that a then-fast-spreading war in Europe might reach America's shores, without ever explicitly saying so.

Dated though it may be, everyone should hear this once. Preferably in a dark room, ideally with a storm going on outside. Science fiction in the audio medium, like it or not, is still measured by a standard that was set in 1938.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster