The 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, directed and narrated by Orson Welles, was an innovative and shocking radio play that caused a public stir, though the scale of the resulting panic has often been exaggerated. The episode of the Mercury Theatre on the Air, adapted from the H.G. Wells novel, was presented in a realistic, breaking-news format that convinced some listeners that a real Martian invasion was underway.
Why War of the Worlds 1934 is a Sci-Fi Masterpiece
YouTube · The Decline and fall of British Sci-Fi
The first half of the program was delivered in a realistic “breaking news” format. Since the Mercury Theatre on the Air had few commercial interruptions, the first break came after fictional reporters had described a devastating alien invasion and the fall of New York City. This apparently caused some confusion and fear among its listeners, though the scale of the panic is disputed.[1] Popular legend holds that some of the radio audience may have been listening to the much more highly rated show The Chase and Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen on NBC and switched to “The War of the Worlds” during a musical interlude, thereby missing Welles’s introduction of his show as a work of science fiction. However, modern research suggests that this happened only in rare instances.[2]: 67–69
Officials with CBS became aware of the public’s growing reaction while the show was still being performed live, and though there was some pressure to stop the production, it continued on to its planned conclusion. There was widespread media outrage in the hours and days that followed. The program’s news-bulletin format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the broadcasters and calls for regulation by the FCC. Welles apologized at a hastily called news conference the next morning, and no punitive action was taken. The broadcast and subsequent publicity brought the 23-year-old Welles to the attention of the general public and gave him the reputation of an innovative storyteller and “trickster”.[1][3]
“The War of the Worlds” begins with a paraphrase of the beginning of the novel, updated to contemporary times. The announcer introduces Orson Welles:
We know now that in the early years of the 20th century, this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns, they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence, people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space. Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are 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. In the 39th year of the 20th century came the great disillusionment. It was near the end of October. Business was better. The war scare was over. More men were back at work. Sales were picking up. On this particular evening, October 30th, the Crossley service estimated that 32 million people were listening in on radios…[4]: 394–395 [21]
see The War of the Worlds (disambiguation).
The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells about an attempted invasion of Earth by beings from the planet Mars with much greater intelligence and more advanced weapons than humans. The Martians intend to eliminate mankind and conquer Earth because their own older and smaller world has reached the “last stage of exhaustion”. It was written between 1895 and 1897,[2] and serialised in Pearson’s Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US in 1897. The full novel was first published in hardcover in 1898 by William Heinemann. The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between humankind and an extraterrestrial race.[3] The novel is the first-person narrative of an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and his younger brother who escapes to Tillingham in Essex as London and Southern England are invaded by Martians. It is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon.[4]
