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Structure
Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 30 general entries.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Wells, H. G.
James Whale. Whale, the flamboyant gay genius behind the 'Frankenstein' films, directed Claude Rains in the latter's transparent film debut.
Boris Karloff. Laughton played Moreau in the best version of Wells' horror classic,' Island of Lost Souls'.
turn them into 'manimals'. Most horrifically in the book and 30's film, Moreau used surgery to turn men into half-animal, half-human hybrids.
on tripod-legged machines. These three-legged war machines kept the illustrators busy!
magnetic 'legs'. The sight of the Martian vehicles on 'invisible' beams of magnetic force was a memorable one(and a real improvement on Wells' original).
California. Though England was mentioned in the movie, naturally they filmed the story close to Hollywood!
Orson Welles. C'mon, you know about Welles' famed 30's radio broadcast of the Wells tale that scared the pants off the country, don't you?
'Cavorite'. 'Cavorite' was the anti-gravity substance that allowed them to make their voyage.
1964. It was released five years before Neil Armstrong and his comrades turned the fantasies of Wells and others into reality.
A woman. Actually Bedford's fiancee, played by lovely Martha {Hyer;} in fact, she was involuntarily 'shanghaied' on the trip!
H. George Wells. BION, in the movie, Rod Taylor's Time Traveller was given that name!(he was called 'George' in the film).
Time After Time. It also starred McDowell's future wife (for a time) Mary Steenburgen and was directed by Nicholas Meyer.
1898. Despite the book being written while the 'Old Queen' was still on the throne, it was way ahead of its time. It reflected the fears of the balance of power in Europe at the time, which was to explode in the Great War in 1914. The book was dedicated to Frank Wells (HG's brother) and reads: "The rendering of his idea"
He is un-named. No clue is given as to the identity of the narrator.
Ogilvy. Ogilvy got up early in the morning and discovered the 'meteorite' in sandpits that lay between Horsell, Ottershaw and Woking. The area of Horsell common is pretty much the same today as it was in the 1890s. I still walk my dog there, and so is the sandpit.
Mars began to cool off.. "The secular cooling that must some day overtake our own planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbour" The gradual cooling down of Mars had turned the war-like creatures attention to our own, warmer, invitingly lush planet.
The Cardigan Regiment. By 11:00 the next day; a squadron of Hussars, two Maxims and about 400 men of the Cardigan Regiment were deployed from Aldershot. The 'Home' of the British Army.
Horsell Common. Horsell Common today, is very much as HG would have known it. It is part of a lengthy network of commons and open areas that have been in existence since Saxon times.
15. After hiding in the rubble he finally emerges, and after an encounter with a dog, he views the landscape. Seeing no Martians on the horizon he decides to risk venturing forth.
A group of men. The narrator first sees the Heat-Ray of the Martians on Horsell Common, when it opened up on a deputation sporting a white flag. "It was as if each man suddenly and momentarily turned to fire".
Weybridge & Shepperton. On the arrival of 5 Martian fighting machines, people huddled on the river bank & panicked. The surge of the mass of humanity forces them into the water, the only available cover. They rushed right along "the gravelly beach and headlong into the water. Others did the same."
HMS Thunder Child. Thunder Child was described as a 'Torpedo-Ram'. The only example of this at the time was HMS Polyphemus (1881); but it was Thunder Child that "....streaming headlong, coming to the rescue of threatened shipping" destroyed the tripod.
Tillingham Bay. Tillingham Bay does not actually exist, as Tillingham is actually a few miles inland. But it does mention the mouth of the river Blackwater off the Essex coast in the North Sea.
10. We only really hear about the invasion of the British Isles...there undoubtedly would have been more, as the title may suggest.
| What was the narrator singing when he was found "wandering, weeping and raving" by a house of kindly people in St John's Wood? | HG Wells' "War of the Worlds"
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The last man left alive. Describing himself as a "...demented man" he drifted aimlessly amid the red weed strewn ruins of the greatest city in the world until he was "sheltered" and "protected" from himself.
Primrose Hill. The narrator, pushing his way across a devastated London, crosses Regents Park and heads towards Kilburn. Finally, weary and exhausted, he spies a lone Martian fighting machine (the third "Martian, erect and motionless like the others."). He decides to, finally, end it all and rushes towards the machine. Only to find it motionless.
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