Once started, this theme never ends:
Wells' Martians invaded Earth and Venus;
Stapledon's Martians invaded Earth, then later his Terrestrials invaded Venus and Neptune;
ERB's Moon Men invaded Earth while his Jovians prepared to invade Mars and other planets;
John Christopher unconsciously plagiarized Wells with a future Earth ruled by extra-solar aliens in tripods;
the Treens conquered Earth with un-Asimovian robots;
Daleks and Thals recalled Morlocks and Eloi, then Daleks invaded Earth, transforming some Earthmen into "robomen";
Heinlein, Blish, Simak, Niven & Pournelle and William R. Burkett Jr. described extraterrestrial invasions of Earth;
Poul Anderson has -
Martians manipulated by extra-solars conquering Earth in a novel;
extra-solars secretly ruling or manipulating Earth in three (?) short stories;
humanoid extra-solars conquering Earth economically in one short story.
A vast theme with, as ever, several contributions by Anderson.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Frankly, I liked Anderson's THE WAR OF TWO WORLDS better than I had Wells' WAR OF THE WORLDS. While Wells was a trailblazer in science fiction, his manner or mode of writing must seem strange to contemporary tastes.
Sean
Sean,
Of those two books, I think that wells' is better. I think we can easily get with Wells' style. It is not too long ago, historically.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But I still found Wells' style of writing rather ponderous and heavy, even tedious.
And I was totally dissatisfied with Wells alien Martians. We don't see them as individuals, rather they struck me as behaving like professional vermin exterminators, treating human beings like rats and mice. By contrast I found the aliens of Anderson's THE WAR OF TWO WORLDS much more satisfactory and convincing, more fleshed out and having comprehensible motives.
Sean
"professional vermin exterminators, treating human beings like rats and mice."
Which seems all too plausible for the behavior of technologically superior conquerors.
Kaor, Jim!
I agree, esp. if the technology of the invading aliens was vastly more advanced than ours. But that wouldn't make for very interesting stories, if the two parties involved couldn't come to some kind of meeting of minds.
So I still think Anderson's THE WAR OF TWO WORLDS was better than Wells' WAR OF THE WORLDS.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment