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Author Topic: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England  (Read 9624 times)

Offline Brummie

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #15 on: February 26, 2011, 10:58:28 AM »
Well here is one way of looking at it.

Whether the Martian technology worked or did not work, the very fact creatures came from space (though of as insane back then let alone today where its more widely accepted life may well be out there) and the technology these creatures used would have spurred humanity on to quickly design its own weapons (bring on ze steampunk!) as it has always done in such situations of war with industrial countries, considering big tech advances in WW1 and WW2.

Society would have also have been turned on its head, given how religious society was back then, to just have something like that come down would be a major slap in the face to the backbone of the victorian world.

So you could imagine the riots and wars as a result of that.

As for the colonies, and perhaps most of Earth I am suspecting many would find it unbelieveable and carry on as normal.

Though a direct attack on one of the greatest powers at the time may have spurred greater attempts at expansion for more resources and territory.

Thats my 2 cents.

Offline ushistoryprof

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #16 on: February 28, 2011, 10:38:00 PM »
"The danger posed by this unprovoked attack must be met with force!  It is time to take the war to the invaders, think of the resources, colonies and prestige to be gained by the conquers of the Red Planet.  We must also think of bringing the true faith and culture to our little slimy brothers on that blighted planet." Sir Imperial Expansionists, on "the Crisis faced by the Empire", London Times.

Does anyone doubt there would have been quite a few comments of this nature after the Martians defeat?  A race to build the necessary technology to reach, conquer and exploit Mars would have been a natural.  Why attack Earthly neighbors when whole new territories would soon be available ( think the race to take the lands of the New World after Columbus's shattering of the European concept of the world).

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Online Patrice

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #17 on: March 01, 2011, 08:26:47 AM »
"The danger posed by this unprovoked attack must be met with force!  It is time to take the war to the invaders, think of the resources, colonies and prestige to be gained by the conquers of the Red Planet.  We must also think of bringing the true faith and culture to our little slimy brothers on that blighted planet." Sir Imperial Expansionists, on "the Crisis faced by the Empire", London Times.
Excellent  lol

These are the new economical markets I was talking about in my previous post. No need on Earth for WWI then!

Offline YPU

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #18 on: March 01, 2011, 08:59:08 AM »
Well, this reminds me that although I am a great fan of the musical adaptation by Jeff Wayne I have in fact not yet read the book. Well the book is sitting on my girlfriends shelve so I guess I know how I will be spending tomorrow then.  :D

What I am wondering is this, if earth would start producing arms to protect itself from any possible future invasions what form would they take? In this scenario England and in fact the world are the less advanced country and I think that when it comes to armoured combat (which I suppose this is with the walkers) the underdog often arms itself with smaller one use weapons that put the user in danger but turn every soldier into a treat to the enemy. Think LAW or IED. Of course the weapons to bring down the Martians might need to be more advanced, but I can imagine some brave soul blowing a leg of a tripod by attaching a explosive device to it. We all know the scenario, hiding in the ruins until the metal monstrosity is close enough, the fear of being detected etz.

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Offline Uncle Mike

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #19 on: March 01, 2011, 03:45:28 PM »
Both Scarlet Traces and The Great Game have endless little bits of stolen martian tek all throughout the story. Spider-legged hansom cabs and such like. The stories are quite good and the art is fantastic!!! No project should be undertaken without first consulting these great graphic novels.

Offline Traveler Man

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #20 on: March 01, 2011, 06:17:52 PM »
I think there's a prospect of British scientists and engineers reverse-engineering the Martian tech from the salvaged remains from the Invasion. It could pan out as a kind of 'Roswell/Area 51' kind of scenario so beloved of some conspiracy theorists.  lol

But while I don't think the other nations will be too eager to exploit the British Empire's temporary weakness by declaring war, there'll be plenty of opportunity for espionage and Colonial clashes.
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Offline Red Orc

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #21 on: March 01, 2011, 11:49:18 PM »
... It could pan out as a kind of 'Roswell/Area 51' kind of scenario so beloved of some conspiracy theorists.  lol...

I think you'll find that the British version is called 'Torchwood'...  ;)

Offline The Yogi

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #22 on: March 02, 2011, 09:51:57 AM »
Well, how interesting this discussion came up just now, as I've happened to bee pondering this very question for the last few days.

There are many things that are left ambigous by Wells. For example, what has happened with the Royal Navy? Apart from the Thunderchild, did it become involved in the fighting in any way? Did it sustain losses? Was it gutted, or escaped almost entirely unscathed?

But here are a few speculations;

FINANCIAL MELTDOWN
The sudden destruction of London will probably have dire economic consequences. London was the financial center of the world. I susppose many financial records would have been lost, leading perhaps to a situation similar to the one in the "Dark Angel" TV series in which the USA was brought down by a terrorist attack wiping out the financial data of the country. And this will have a domino-effect of the kind we've been only too familiar with the last two years.

BOER WAR
The Martian invasion happened in the Autumn of 1900 (the first cylinder launched in September). By this time the British had already captured Pretoria (in June), but the Boers were by no means crushed and fought on into 1902. It all depends how the British would have responded to the Martian invasion. Would they have offered a reasonable peace to the Boers and brought home as many troops as possible? Would they have sent home part of the troops and fought on? I consider these to be the most likely scenarios. So either the Boer republics live on past 1900 after a status quo peace, or the war drags on for a while longer, after which the British call it a day because the cost of the war has become prohibitive in view of the costs of reconstruction and the depression likely following the destruction of London. So my take is the Martians save the Boer’s bacon.
« Last Edit: March 02, 2011, 10:38:46 AM by The Yogi »

Offline The Yogi

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #23 on: March 02, 2011, 10:58:52 AM »
continued from previous post

MILITARY TECHNOLOGY
Let us, for the sake of discussion, consider the epilogue to ”The War of the Worlds” gospel and humanity was unable to reproduce or understand crucial parts of Martian technology for at least two decades after the invasion.

Still, the weapons used by the Martians would have inspired Earthly similes. The Black Smoke might have been impossible to replicate, but the idea to use poisonous gasses in war would have proven itself a decade and a half earlier, and most likely been implemented. At the same time, protection gear against poisonous gasses would have been created almost instantly, as part of the inevitable preparations against a second Martian wave.

Also, the idea of anti-equipment artillery (rather than anti-personnel field artillery), that is to say what we today would call anti-tank or anti-aircraft guns would have appeared almost overnight after the invasion. British field guns proved capable of destroying fighting machines in the cases where they managed to hit them – the development of guns capable of very accurate direct fire against moving targets would have been a matter of course, again as parts of the preparations against a second attack by the Martians and their fighting machines.

The fighting machines themselves would undoubtedly have created such an impression that they would have spawned the creation of AFVs, substituting tripod legs with wheels and heat rays with machine guns and cannon. Contraptions like the bizarre Russian Czar tank, towering over the landscape on gigantic spoked wheels, immediately spring to mind – the height of the Martian fighting machines would have led engineers in that direction, rather than ground-crawling true tanks.

On the other hand, such an AFV would have been very vulnerable to the Martian heat ray, so if the overriding design demand was a vehicle capable of going up against the fighting machines, a medium sized  tracked machine with light armor but thick thermal shielding (asbestos padding) armed with accurate direct-fire cannon seems the most likely answer.
« Last Edit: March 02, 2011, 11:00:46 AM by The Yogi »

Offline rob_alderman

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #24 on: March 04, 2011, 04:50:40 PM »
You do know its all a story and not real do you?

haha

I like this comment!

However, none of us where there at the time, so it could well have happened but no-one wanted to record it as real history!!!

History is an abstraction, after-all.

Interesting thinking though, the whole 'what if'ing' of a 'what if' scenario...

Offline warrenpeace

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #25 on: March 04, 2011, 07:55:11 PM »


Society would have also have been turned on its head, given how religious society was back then, to just have something like that come down would be a major slap in the face to the backbone of the victorian world.

So you could imagine the riots and wars as a result of that.



I like Brummie's point.  The Martian invasion would likely open up even more potential for cults than what was already happening in the religiously crazy 19th Century.  There could be pseudo-science cults, alien god cults, and astro spiritualist cults.  Considering that the 2nd bloodiest war in history had just been fought in China over the Taiping religious rebellion, the type of religious cataclysm that could have been provoked by the Martian invasion might rock the world.  That kind of thing could have undermined the rampant nationalism that led to the Great War, transferring some of the energy spent on national conflicts into conflicts over science, religion, and interstellar versions of Darwinism and Marxism.
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Online Patrice

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #26 on: March 04, 2011, 10:58:45 PM »
interstellar versions of (...) Marxism.
I would like to know more about this one  :D

There was a man who wrote some delirious ideas about that, but much later : nickname "Juan Posadas", in the 1970s.

Offline Brummie

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #27 on: March 04, 2011, 11:40:33 PM »
Well there is strange glimpses of evidence to suggest that Mars may have had an environment that could have sustained life during the time span of Humanities existence on Earth. There was something i read a while back where people 2000 years ago, if they had a telescope good enough, they would have seen a very different mars.

However something ( a vast comet) tore apart an already fragile environment and in the few thousand years since any signs of life or life itself would have just vanished from the surface of Mars. The only way you'd know if anything substantial came to be there is if you dug very deep.

If you had a very far stretching What if, and if you believe in Steven Hawkings theory that there is in fact many parallel Universes to this one that would be in endless in nature and change of every possibility. Well, maybe Mars was never hit my an asteroid, maybe it did have advanced intelligent life and maybe they did hit Earth?!




Offline moif

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #28 on: March 05, 2011, 01:06:18 AM »
This is it:

http://www.wotw-goliath.com/video_trailer.html
Its been three, or even four years since I first saw a trailer for that film, and I'm still waiting for it to be released. I wonder whats gone wrong with it
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Offline Amalric

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Re: Consequences of HG Wells Martian invasion of England
« Reply #29 on: March 05, 2011, 06:50:58 PM »
.... interstellar versions of ... Marxism.

I would like to know more about this one...

Well in my pulp games, the second wave of martians came in 1908 and were mostly destroyed whilst trying to land in the tunguska region of Siberia. The martian survivors, with only a few bits of their tech, then slowly took over the Russian empire and introduced the most inhuman form of government ever known to man, Communism. Is it a coincident that Mars is the Red planet and the soviets are known as the Reds or that they were the first humans to successfully use Martian tech?

How else do you explain designs like this if not for their Martian overlords?



 

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