English novelist, H.G. Wells is considered the founding father of sci-fi. And his creative work presented through books such as The Time Machine, The First Man in the Moon, The War in the Air and The Sleeper Awakes may have predicted the advent of aircraft, flights to the moon, automatic doors, nuclear weapons and satellite television.
His 1898 novel War of the Worlds was the first to detail extraterrestrial and human conflict. This epic tale of alien invasion has spawned many radio, film, television, game and print renditions as well as inspiring iterations and parallel sequel stories by other authors and filmmakers.
The classic novel even influenced the works of renowned scientists, most notably Robert H. Goddard, who was inspired by the book when he read it at the age of 17 and subsequently went on to receive a Bachelor of Science degree. Goddard ended up developing both the liquid-fuelled rocket and multistage rocket which, 71 years later, resulted in the Apollo 11 moon landing. His inventions continue to be used in space vehicles to this day.
The newest adaptation of Wells' novel, an eight-part series created by Howard Overman (Misfits, Merlin) and starring Gabriel Byrne, Elizabeth McGovern, Léa Drucker and Daisy Edgar-Jones, premieres October 7th at 8 p.m. (8:30NT) on CBC Television and CBC Gem.
To celebrate its arrival, we present a list of some of the most notable, odd and amazing adaptations of this classic work.
Note - You can click herego back to The Visual history of War of the Worlds article.
One of the most adapted stories
1938 - Many adaptations and dramatizations of War of the Worlds have one thing in common: a story setting change from London, England to a more localized one. Probably the most memorable example is this first CBS radio dramatization directed by Orson Welles that, because of its realistic newcast approach, reportedly convinced some listeners that the Martian invasion was actually taking place, causing public hysteria in New York — a location that was changed by Welles in order to appeal to an American audience.
It was one of the first times the concept of media going viral became apparent. For weeks after the broadcast, the newspapers across the U.S. extensively reported on the public's reaction.
- How Orson Welles' 1930s War of the Worlds radio adaptation went viral
The trickle down effect was immense with a plethora of radio, movie and TV renditions that followed, including the BBC's 1950 six episode radio dramatisation as adapted by Jon Manchip White whose scripts were used again in BBC's 1967 dramatization.
1953 - The first feature film adaptation was produced by an honorary Oscar winner, George Pal (Houdini, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm), and directed by Byron Haskin who also produced the pilot episode of Star Trek.
Though this film was not a very faithful rendition of the book, with many differences from the plot change and the main character being a California scientist instead of a British writer to the portrayal of religion and clergymen characters which were favourably depicted in the film as opposed to the book, what did remain is the core narrative of the Martian attacking the Earth and the crash landing.
The film went on to win an Academy Award and inspire other adaptations of it such as 1955 by CBS radio's The Lux Radio Theater — a one hour radio show broadcasting renditions of popular films or Broadway plays — as well as notable future filmmakers, such as Steven Spielberg.
1955 - Classics Illustrated, an American comic book/magazine series that featured adaptations of literary classics such as Les Miserables, Moby Dick, Hamlet, published its 124th issues, Classics Illustrated #124, becoming the oldest graphic novel adaptation of War of the Worlds.
In 2005, Toronto's Jack Lake Productions, who in 2003 revived the Classics Illustrated Junior which ended its run in 1971, published a Classics Illustrated 50th anniversary hard and soft cover edition of War of the Worlds with new remastered artwork.
1957 - By this time CBS had done a few radio adaptations of the book but none at par with Welles' version. Its show, Studio One, proceeded to make a top-rated television rendition of Orson Welles' broadcast in an episode "The Night America Trembled," dramatizing the public reaction to Welles' 1938 broadcast — even using audio snippets from Welles' program.
Orson Welles' name was never mentioned due to legal reasons. He was reportedly involved in a lawsuit against CBS after the broadcast, about the authorship of the radio play but ultimately lost.
1968 - A modernized version of the 1938 broadcast aired on a Buffalo radio station, WKBW, as produced by Jefferson Kaye who was a huge fan of Welles' broadcast.
Most radio versions up to that point were minor variations of Welles' story — script re-reading by different actors, etc. with changed locations but Kaye decided to ignore the original script by Welles and wrote his own.
Kaye moved the action to Grand Island, New York and mirrored Welles' "real newscast" approach with actual news reporters as actors describing the events. The audience response was similar to the original broadcast and created a bit of a panic, but on a much smaller scale.
1973 - Marvel Comics' Amazing Adventures Vol 2 #18 introduces Killraven (a.k.a Warrior of the Worlds), a character who in an alternative timeline fights H. G. Wells' Martians.
1975 - The Emmy award-winning made-for-television movie, The Night That Panicked America, was inspired by the aforementioned 1957 Studio One radio show and focused on the public reaction to Orson Welles' 1938 broadcast.
This version, however, sees the story from the point of view of Welles and his associates as well as a few fictional families who listened to the program.
1975 - Sherlock Holmes' The War of the Worlds created by Manly Wade Wellman and his son Wade Wellman is a sequel to H.G. Wells' story describing the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson and Professor Challenger during the Martian occupation of London.
Among many changes, one of them is the Martians being portrayed as vampires who not only suck but also ingest blood.
Wells' short story The Crystal Egg was a prequel to this version that crossed over Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger stories and therefore the character itself.
1977 - Marvel Classics Comics was a comics magazine specializing in adaptations of literary classics, picking up where Classics Illustrated left off in 1971. Its issue Marvel Classics Comics Vol 1 #14 was an adaptation of the original War of the Worlds novel.
1978 - Jeff Wayne released a best selling musical album of the story with voices of the nine-time Oscar nominee, Richard Burton (Hamlet), and singer songwriter, David Essex.
The two-disc album which sold over 15 million copies worldwide, remains a bestseller and was named the 32nd best-selling studio album of all time in the UK, in 2018. It spawned multiple versions including video games, DVDs, and live tours.
Wayne reimagined it one more time in 2012 with a second album The New Generation narrated by Academy Award nominee Liam Neeson in place of Burton. Both tour versions used narration, projected computer graphics and a large Martian fighting machine on stage.
1978 - Game designer Tomohiro Nishikado was a huge fan of Wells' novel. Inspired by its Martian, he created an arcade game Space Invaders, the first fixed shooter game that ended up popularizing the shoot 'em up genre.
The game was a huge commercial success in 82 grossing 3.8 billion, becoming the best-selling video game at the time and most influential game of all times to date — which ushered the age of arcade video games. By 2016, total gross revenue was estimated at over 13 billion.
Many adaptations of the game followed including a sequel Part II that came out the following year, a 2D action/platform game narrated by Patrick Stewart in 2011 plus portable and home console versions as well as movies and books featuring the game.
1988 - A part of the boom of first-run syndicated television series being produced in late 80s was this Canadian/American science-fiction series — loosely based on Wells' novel and mainly a sequel to the first 1953 film — produced by Greg Strangis.
The series used the same war machine designs often incorporating aspects from the 50s film, the 30s radio adaptation and the original novel into its mythology. It was filmed in Toronto and ran for two seasons.
1990 - Spaced Invaders comedy film was written and directed by Patrick Read Johnson (Baby's Day Out). In this version, Martians land in a small Illinois town at the same time as the local radio station is rebroadcasting Orson Welles' radio drama.
1996 - Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!, a science fiction comedy, spoofs various alien invasion films of the 50s, including the 1953 film War of the Worlds produced by Pal.
1996 - Independence Day, a sci-fi action film starring Will Smith that deals with the extraterrestrial attack on human species much like Wells' novel, pays homage to it by having a computer virus cause the downfall of the aliens, only with an updated pathogen.
1998 - Superman: War of the Worlds, a DC Comics Elseworlds comic story, is a loose adaptation of the original novel, primarily based on the Superman mythology.
This story was relocated to 1938 Metropolis, oddly to the year of the first radio adaptation but also the year Superman first appeared in Action Comics, where Superman meets Martians after they conquered major cities on Earth. However, Superman does not have the full range of powers that he has in later, more modern, comics.
2001 - An animated TV series, Justice League adapts the main events and visuals of Wells' novel for its three part story, Secret Origins where aliens attack Earth via tripods with ray devices and a team of superheroes, Superman included, attempt to stop them. The series tributes Wells' original novel by among many things including a character called General Wells.
2005 - Haskin's Academy Award-winning 1953 adaptation influenced many sci-fi films. Steven Spielberg's rendition starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning with a featured narration by Morgan Freeman is no exception — making it also loosely based on the original novel.
2005 - This first direct-to-video adaptation, set in 1898 Victorian England, was praised for its faithfulness to the original story, directed by Timothy Hines.
Two weeks later H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, another loose adaptation of the novel directed by David Michael Latt, followed. It was also a mockbuster of Spielberg's version as it was based on its source material. The sequel titled War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave, directed by C. Thomas Howell came out in 2008.
2006 - Scary Movie 4's entire plot spoofs Steven Spielberg's film adaptation.
The same year, The Simpsons Halloween specials "Treehouse of Horror XVII" episode "The Day the Earth Looked Stupid" saw residents of a 1938 Springfield duped into thinking an actual alien invasion happened after listening to Orson Welles's War of the Worlds radio broadcast.
Mass hysteria followed, much like what allegedly happened after the real broadcast but once Springfielders discovered that it was all a hoax, they refused to believe when an actual invasion did happen shortly after.
2006 - A graphic novel adaptation by Ian Edginton and D'Israeli titled H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, which is set in the original 19th-century, is essentially a prequel to their steampunk series Scarlet Traces, imagining what the Victorians would have done with Martian technology.
2012 - After his 2005 adaptation, Timothy Haines directed War of the Worlds: The True Story, a sci-fi/horror mockumentary that mimics Orson Welles' 1938 approach of presenting the story as a true account of actual events. The story is told as if it were a real documentary, documenting recollections of a Martian war survivor.
2012 - War of the Worlds: Goliath is an animated loose sequel of the original novel, set 15 years later which came out the same year. It was novelized by science fiction author Adam J. Whitlatch in 2014.
2013 - A Canadian sci-fi docudrama, The Great Martian War 1913–1917 is an alternate history in which Europe and its allies fight the Martian invaders instead of Germany during WWI — told in the format of a documentary film on the History Channel.
2017 - Brave New Jersey is a comedy about a New Jersey town impacted by the Orson Welles broadcast.
The same year, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a War of the Worlds opera by Annie Gosfield, based on Orson Welles' infamous 1938 radio drama, premiered at Walt Disney Concert Hall and was broadcast on the streets of L.A. via air raid sirens that were repurposed into public speakers. The opera was directed by Yuval Sharon and narrated by Sigourney Weaver (Aliens).
2018 - Presented as an audio drama in 5.1 surround sound, is a faithful dramatization of the original novel titled The Coming of the Martians. It retains the dark and horrific nature of events as they are portrayed in the book recreating the scenes without much altering of the original story.
2019 - This three-part BBC adaptation of the novel stays faithful to the book. It's the first British television adaptation of the story and the third that takes place in the original timeframe, the other two versions being the aforementioned Jeff Wayne's musical and the 2005 film by Timothy Hines.
With many cinematic, radio, musical and game adaptations, the book itself was never fully illustrated until 2019 when a 276 page hardback book by Sam Dyer (designer), Adam Rufino (illustrator) and Adam Roberts (introduction) brought the classic scenes to life. The book contains the original text with over a 100 full-color illustrations by Rufino.
Coming to CBC this October
2019 - A fresh new interpretation of the story is coming to CBC Gem this October. The eight-episode series places the action in contemporary Europe.
"I wanted to explore the idea that, just like H. G. Wells' aliens, mankind has an almost limitless capacity to destroy those it views as inferior or different," says creator and writer of the series, Howard Overman.
He adds that Stephen Hawking's quote — where he compares the hypothetical alien arrival to Christopher Columbus' first landing in America, which didn't turn out well for America's Indigenous peoples — was as much an inspiration for this new version of War of the Worlds as H.G. Wells' original novel was.
Follow @waroftheworldoncbc on Instagram for more info, behind the scenes and updates on this series.
- A visual history of the War of the Worlds
