Snore of the Worlds

I picked up H.G. Wells the War of the Worlds because I wanted to read something with a good plot.  Now, seventy pages into it, I’ve realized: Wells isn’t any good at plotting.

He’s a cinematic intelligence born into a prosy century.  The War of The Worlds is all high concept–what if intelligent life from other planets treated us as we treat microbial life; it’s all landscapes and logistics; things which could be communicated in one stunning shot in a movie are awkward pages in the book.

The narrator isn’t quite a character; he has the bland immunity of a journalist; he doesn’t offer much in the way of motive or eccentricity. (Thus, Tom Cruise in the movie's lead.)  Sometimes, like a reporter who can’t stop talking about a story but who doesn’t have anything to say, he tosses it back to a colleague who relates essentially the same story: huge mechanically enhanced Martian invaders are frying stuff with heat rays. Since the narrator can’t be killed, you’d think Wells would develop a major second character who could be put in real jeopardy. Not so far and so far might be all the further I get.   

Comments

[amy]

brilliant. yes, isn't it weird to remember that high-concept, hollywoodish crap was around long ago? that h.g wells seems like a classic now, just because he's old, when really his contemporaries probably saw him as the dan brown of the day?

heh.

[amy]

ps -- based on what your left-hand column here claims you're listening to, may i suggest ghostface killah's fishscale, and jean grae's this week? both are excellent. they are my 'page-building' jams at work. woot!

[Mandy]

My parents have a copy with a groovy purple cover, and that cover turned out to be the best part.

[K]

The cover of this one's pretty cool. too. As for the jams (see above), I'm currently digging the new TV On The Radio, some old Lemonheads, and some really old Muddy Waters, all Christmas gifts and stocking stuffers from E. And, also, Space Ghost's Musical Bar-B-Q. A triumph of stupid.

[Kootch]

A friend of mine accurately described the Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise movie adaptation -- which was horrible -- as "Tom Cruise learns better parenting through alien invasion." As good a tagline as I could imagine. It must be depressing for Mr. Cruise to be completely outshone on screen by a ten-year-old.