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H. G. Wells, visionary telescopes, and the "Matter of Mars".(Critical essay)

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From: Philological Quarterly
Date: 20040101
Author:Crossley, Robert

Famously, H. G. Wells traced the begetting of The War of the Worlds to a casual remark made by his brother Frank on a walk through rural Surrey. "Suppose some beings from another planet were to drop out of the sky suddenly ... and begin laying about them here!" (1) As the author recalled the conversation, the brothers had been discussing the extermination of the Tasmanians by European settlers. This anecdote has always been useful in opening up the anticolonialist allegory of Wells's invasion-from-Mars novel, but the kind of Martian narrative he devised did not itself simply drop ...

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