Rescuing the War of the Worlds

Eve of the War have a few scanned pages from Hi-Fi News Magazine on Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. Look on in wonder at how close the original recordings came to being unusable.

In related news there's this which includes a DVD documentary. Someone buy it for me!!!!!

Talking about buying things I've recently received delivery of one of these:

You too can own one.

Jeff Waynes The War of the Worlds Live Concerts

Eve of the War reports that the UK tour dates for Jeff Waynes The War of the Worlds Musical "Live" concerts have been announced. These dates are subject to change:

Saturday 15 April 2006 - Bournemouth BIC
Sunday 16 April 2006 - Cardiff International Arena
Tuesday 18 April 2006 - London Royal Albert Hall
Wednesday 19 April 2006 - Birmingham NEC
Thursday 20 April 2006 - Nottingham Arena
Saturday 22 April 2006 - Glasgow Clyde Auditorium
Sunday 23 April 2006 - Manchester MEN Arena

It's not that I am obsessed or anything.

Talking about TWOW, I discovered these guys on iTunes last night. Check out their Death By Television album; the War of the Worlds track on that is class....

When the demons arrive

So, I've gone and won a bid on this painting of a chick being felt up by some kind of alien tripod freak:

That makes me cultured.

Honestly though, you would not believe how difficult it is to find original art work (not just prints and the like) on my chosen subject (which is not, I might add, women being felt up by tripods). If I had money, I'd commission some.

The Martians are coming!

Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

Oddly enough we've had a whole War with the Maritians category here on the England Project for a while. Now, perhaps, there'll be something to put in it.

Their own twelfth of August

On the 25th December this year a little star will appear in the Martian skies.

Beagle 2 will enter the atmosphere and descend, hanging from its parachutes, until it deploys its air bags and lands at 02:54 GMT. It will then land again, and again, and again until the bouncing stops. That’s the plan anyway.

According to this timeline we will then have to wait until 05:15 GMT at the earliest before receiving any signal from the lander.

The 25th December 2003, Christmas Day, will be the Martian 12th August. The day we brought the war to the Martians. The day we took them on at their own game. They do deserve it after all.

Here’s what a 19th century journalist recalls of our first encounter with the Martian menace:

At midnight on the twelfth of August, a huge mass of luminous gas erupted from Mars and sped towards Earth. Across two hundred million miles of void, invisibly hurtling towards us, came the first of the missiles that were to bring so much calamity to Earth. As I watched, there was another jet of gas. It was another missile, starting on its way.

And that's how it was for the next the next ten nights. A flare, spurting out from Mars - bright green, drawing a green mist behind it - a beautiful, but somehow disturbing sight. Ogilvy, the astronomer, assured me we were in no danger. He was convinced there could be no living thing on that remote, forbidding planet.

It’s not surprising that men of the time took Ogilvy at his word; he was a man of science after all. How wrong Ogilvy was proven to be.

Then came the night the first missile approached Earth. It was thought to be an ordinary falling star, but the next day there was a huge crater in the middle of the Common, and Ogilvy came to examine what lay there: a cylinder, thirty yards across, glowing hot...and with faint sounds of movement coming from with.

Suddenly the top began moving, rotating, unscrewing…

I have a great admiration for the journalist. By all accounts he had a dreadful time of it and was, as far as I can tell, one of the only reporters able to report on the events from the front line. He was there to see the first Martian lander on Horsell common and he was there to report on the first time the heat ray was deployed.

Here’s how he reports the events of his encounter with the artillery man, discovering for the first time that the Martians were mobile and able to leave their landers:

The hammering from the pit and the pounding of guns grew louder. My fear rose at the sound of someone creeping into the house. Then I saw it was a young artilleryman, weary, streaked with blood and dirt.

Artilleryman: Anyone here?
Journalist: Come in. Here, drink this.
Artilleryman: Thank you.
Journalist: What's happened?
Artilleryman: They wiped us out. Hundreds dead, maybe thousands.
Journalist: The heat ray?
Artilleryman: The Martians. They were inside the hoods of machines they'd made, massive metal things on legs. Giant machines that walked. They attacked us. They wiped us out.
Journalist: Machines?
Artilleryman: Fighting machines, picking up men and bashing them against trees. Just hunks of metal, but they knew exactly what they were doing.
Journalist: Hmm. There was another cylinder came last night.
Artilleryman: Yes. Yes, it looked bound for London.

Most of you would have read about this encounter at school, many would have seen it inscribed an the memorial in Trafalgar Square, some of you will have recited the words during school assembly countless times. The Artilleryman’s Litany was always taught at school when I was a lad, far more so than it is now. They wiped us out. Hundreds dead, maybe thousands. It still makes me shiver.

A short time after this report the Martians sent the HMS Thunderchild to oblivion. They destroyed the pride of the British Navy in an instant and took London for their own. The Martians made the Norman conquest look like a tea party.

It's a matter of some argument but it looks like we only managed to destroy two Martian fighting machines during the whole invasion and if it were not for a very lucky turn of events mankind would have been consigned to history; a history no doubt written by the Martians.

Anyhow, now it’s our turn to dish out the destruction. To beat the Martians at their own game.

Beagle 2 is the first of three landers on their way to Mars each one carrying a biological payload engineered to thrive on the Martian surface. When this payload is released the Martians will reap the whirlwind. They will discover the cost of what they have done and pay the price in full.

Good luck Beagle 2, make us proud.

To learn more go and read the post by Michael Jennings over at samizdata.net.