Rise of the Machines: Why do not we go through the "visions" of a future dystopian HG Wells

Rise of the Machines: Why do not we go through the "visions" of a future dystopian HG Wells


On the evening of 30 October 1938, radio listeners in the metropolitan New York region, for an edition of "Ramon Raquello" settled and his orchestra. Suddenly the show by the driver, who told that it was interrupted by a special bulletin was "Intercontinental Radio News". Perhaps some listeners scratching their heads and wonder what the Intercontinental Radio News, but apparently not much. Mysterious explosions of "incandescent gas" on Mars observed by different telescopes, said IRN

Then came a strange form of aircraft in different parts of the country and "weird, scary creatures jump out of them. Soon, reports began to come from all above the world from a Martian invasion of Earth. A huge panic in the newspapers, thousands of calls .

"I was hysterical," a woman who heard the broadcast as a teenager to be named later. "My two friends and I were crying and holding each other and everything seemed so insignificant in the face of death. We thought it was terrible to die so young".

Finally, the man who produced the radio play. It was the eve of Halloween, and invented a fictional work written by a man born 145 years ago, HG Wells.

Finally, the man who produced the radio play. It was the eve of Halloween, and invented a fictional work written by a man born 145 years ago, HG Wells.

told "This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen," the actor and director, quietly, "out of character, to ensure that the War of the Worlds not as important holiday, which would offer Mercury Theatre radio version of the association in a sheet and jumped out of the bushes and yelled boo. We would be pleased to understand that he meant. "

In retrospect, it is what is troubling the wonderful War of the Worlds panic radio in 1938 that despite this revelation - even in the opening of the exhibition and during the breaks - some listeners in their sub-crouch further reason for the day. They were of course the power of radio to respond adaptation by Orson Welles "

But Welles had to help. He has a master work of one man, 30 years before Hiroshima, provided that the nuclear war and nuclear energy work written. HG Wells desirable us around what he frightening than the crisis - the technology even more powerful in the hands of the human race. "If man danger, confusion and evil, the audience these days is vast beyond all previous experience, because science has its power as never before," Wells wrote in its brief history, World, published in 1922.

This observation has become a cliché in our times. But it was Wells who are strong, and drove home, the trio of novels that he wrote in four awesome years ago: War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and The Iceland of Dr. Moreau. While we love these books and their film adaptations that we have forgotten is that Wells has made a warning, one that, as an intellectual alternative, is now playing in new forms for each film.

If we delight in the "Rise of the Machines" plots of the Terminator and Aliens series, we have keep reading HG Wells.

The youngest son of a failed businessman, lived and worked in a London suburb - Herbert George Wells was 21st Born September 1866. At 13, his family, a chemist Herbert teaching is a trader of the canvas. At the end escaped two professions and won a scholarship to the University of London.

behind studying biology Wells taught for a while. Then he took journalism "in part because it is a job is more rewarding than teaching in England," he says. But before a philosopher who had wonderful influence on him. Famous conferences Huxley, "Evolution and Ethics", responded to the ruling doctrine of the time - social Darwinism, with its assumption that human society is determined, the "survival of the fittest" ethos is to follow to course.

Huxley argued that human civilization depended reject this condition, no answers. "We test to understand, when and for all that the ethical progress of society, not on imitating the cosmic process, let alone walk, but to fight, depends," he writes. "The history of civilization may be described the steps that people are able to construct an artificial world in the cosmos".

"'S. abuses". Wells novels, such as science and technology play terribly in the absence of this, which clearly mentioned in the introduction, focusing War of the Worlds - his famous 1898 report of a Martian invasion of Earth, "Infinity in movies like Independence Day and the Battle of Los Angeles divided. Neither the Mercury Theatre in 1938 or 2005 version of Steven Spielberg starring Tom Cruise include Wells explain "why the Martians attack Earth, the planet was cooling the house.

"Looking astride space with instruments to" see "Morning Star of Hope," told Wells, "our planet hotter, with green vegetation and blue water, cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its strip of cloud features range of populated and narrow , congested marine seas. "

And we men, the creatures that inhabit this country, they must be at least as low as strange and monkeys and lemurs to us. The spiritual part of humans shows that life is a constant struggle for existence, and it seems that there is also a belief in the minds on the planet Mars. Your world has progressed in its cooling and this world is still full of life, but then only with what they see as inferior animals. To bring the war to the sun, in fact, their only way out of the destruction that creeps down from generation to generation, to them.

And before judging too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and has worked total destruction of our own species, not only in animals such as bison and the dodo is gone, but the inferior races. Tasmania, which, despite its human form, completely wiped out of existence in a war of extermination by European immigrants in 50 years. We are like the apostles of mercy in relation to complain if the Martians have struggled with the same spirit?

We will survive this attack by biological chance. Foreigners are found to be allergic to the bacteria die on the earth and. But the clues to the evolution and devolution of the war about the world as the main characters (interpreted freely by Tim Robbins in the Spielberg film) in a conversation "with a" shooter ", which is the main character in a retirement home. In the Roman has many plans for the soldier what to do - first make a new company in the sewers of London.

"We need a way to live, where people may live and reproduce, and think it is completely safe for children everywhere," he told. "Yes - wait a minute, and I'll. explain what I think should be finished every tame as tame animals . The danger is that we keep wild -. degenerate into a kind of large wild rat".