Our Favourite Martians: the Public Reaction to HG Wells’s Aliens Stephen Baxter UKSRN, 2-3 March 2017, Manchester
‘Sometimes I stand on spots like this and sort of half-close my eyes, so it gets dim and indistinct . . .’ The Artilleryman, The Massacr e of Mankind Chapter 31
Biology: Wells: Extrapolation: Evolution From humanoids ( Man of the • Year Million , 1893) From a now-reduced ecology • ( Massacre of Mankind ) Reproduction Budding Shared care of the young ( MOM ) Food Red weed Future: food machines, • Humanoids underground living ( MOYM ) • Blood transfusion •
Society /Technology: Wells: Extrapolation: Social structure Telepathy No lying • • Loyalty to each other No external records • • A unified Mars No hierarchies • • Globally unified society • No war • ( MOM ) Technology Cylinders – hard-landing General purpose machines, not • • Fighting-Machines, Handling- military • Machines, Excavating Machines Mature technology: no • Mechas / robots significant upgrade after First • General purpose War (but revision of strategy: • Animal-like e.g. impact weapons, flying • machines) Self-replicating… terraforming? • ( MOM )
The Martians on Earth: Wells: Extrapolation: Strategy Travel near perihelic opposition Opportunities at later • • Targeting London oppositions • London: Earth an inner world; • London visible on nightside; decapitation of global society Retrieval of their dead • Securing Earth and mankind: • Second wave scouts planet and studies mankind, in advance of third wave ( MOM ) Errors Vulnerability to bacteria From a long-tamed ecology • • Water: oceans / ships; black Unfamiliarity with a water world • • smoke (rain) Columbus first; Conquistadors • Human resistance followed ( MOM ) •
The Martians on Earth: Wells: Extrapolation: Motive Climate collapse on Mars They must come again: to Venus ( WOTW) • to Earth ( MOM ) • First contact Attempts to signal, aid…
More aliens amongst us. . . • Superman (1938) • Doctor Who (1963) • First contact… • The Zoo Hypothesis…
Our Favourite Martians? WOTW a complex myth: Martians = colonialism, technological warfare, climate migrants The Martians: Thoroughly alien, thoroughly logical (not • monsters) Courage: in battling global climate • collapse Morality: loyalty to each other • But . . . •
Loving the alien? The fatal flaw we share: lack of empathy . . . • ”And we men, the creatures who inhabit this • earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us . . . And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?” ( WOTW Chapter 1) But even so… •
Compassion …
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