Robert, give it up. Wells was right to focus the story on things the narrator knew and cared about. If he did it by accident, then kudos to his good luck. It isn't a flaw in the story, only in your naive perceptions of what ought to have been in the story. It's a good example of concentrating on the character rather than the epic scale of the plot.

There'll be no meeting of minds on this issue between Survivor and I, I'm sure, but I've sure had a blast discussing it.

Maybe I should go on about what I actually like about the book---plenty---but we do seem to have wandered away from the original topic to discuss Wells and "The War of the Worlds" at such length. I might post something in the appropriate forum for discussing a published work, but it'd likely be lengthy, and I'm pressed for time today.

Wells describes where the cylinders land, all around and in the London area. No other landings are mentioned. These are of a number that match the number of "eruptions" observed on Mars. (I have not compiled a list.)

A great number of people were killed and a great number fled the area. Towards the end, when other areas of the world are mentioned, they're either mentioned as possible future Martian targets. "...Perhaps even now they were destroying Berlin or Paris, or it might be they had gone northward." Book II, Chapter VI, "The Work of Fifteen Days."

Later on, in Book II, Chapter IX, "Wreckage," mentions "...a thousand cities, chilled by ghastly apprehensions, suddenly flashed into frantic illuminations; they knew of it in Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham..." And "Across the Channel, across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic, corn, bread and meat were tearing to our relief. All the shipping in the world seemed going Londonward in these days." Bread, sent by the French government, was being distributed.

I cannot imagine this happening if these areas had sustained attacks even a hundredth as severe as the one Wells describes.

But that's just looking at it from the words in the book. If a skilled writer like Wells had intended his Martians to have landed anywhere else, a few lines in Book II, Chapters IX "Wreckage" and X "The Epilogue" could have taken care of it; the narrator speaks of many things that were certainly out of his personal knowledge, and it would have been appropriate to mention attacks on, say, Tokyo or New York or New Delhi or Johannesburg. (Cited here as examples only.)

You're looking at "All the shipping in the world seemed going Londonward in these days." Remember whose perspective we're using. Remember where the narrator is, and what he thinks of as "normal". He thinks that there should be as much or more being exported than being imported. It is astonishing to him that this is not so.

You mention that the narrator doesn't know what the Martians are doing elsewhere in the world. Surely this is just the point that I've been making?

This is interesting and I don't think Robert is unique, I think there are many readers who feel disappointed when their 'patch' of ground doesn't rate a mention in an 'earth-shattering' story like War of the Worlds.

Think of the movie Independence Day. What a sad little caper that was, tugging its forelock to other places around the world. Did the final tableau of crashed ships in 'landmarks' places around the world, strengthen the story? And what about Signs? It had 'late-breaking news' on TV and in the end the aliens were defeated by some 'ancient technique' in India (or somewhere), that was never explained. Is anyone suggesting these movies are more enjoyable than War of the Worlds because they 'globalised' their stories? Or did they avoid an error that Well's stumbled into? No, I don't think so.

Of all the faults in Wells' story, what makes this (perceived) one so devastating for some reader's enjoyment of the story? Was Wells ethnocentric simply because some readers lack capacity to fully enjoy a story like this where the described events take place only in Britain?

Or is it that many American/New Jersey readers read the book AFTER having heard the broadcast. It would be interesting to find out whether those readers felt disappointed that the story was set in England and not in their neighbourhood. Did it seem to spoil it for them? Perhaps this particular criticism says more about the reader's tendencies than the writer's? Do they have the same criticism of the broadcast as the book?

What are your thoughts about it Robert? Is the broadcast flawed in the same way? Is it less enjoyable because it takes place only in America?

I don't recall any version of that I've perused---semi-official, like the 1938 radio version or the 1950s movie version (I haven't seen the recent version), or unofficial ("Independence Day," for one) that made that same mistake. The Martians / alien invaders landed in a variety of places all over the world.

There was a book a few years ago, "War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches," or a similar title. I didn't buy it but I read some of the stories as they were published in this magazine or that. (I didn't buy it because I was going through one of my "I'm flat broke" periods of life.) Certainly some of these stories have the Martians landing elsewhere than metropolitan and surbuban London---but Wells didn't.

As for Survivor's contentions---well, I cited my examples of why I think Wells erred from the text itself. I'll have to see what examples Survivor can cite from the text to support his contentions.

The second citation is making a POV point. London, previously the nerve center of the world's mightiest empire, is now the recipient of charity, even from Ireland and France. Only the reader totally ignorant of the place London held in the merchantile world of that time (and Wells mentions this point, though perhaps he doesn't belabor it sufficiently) could fail to understand the meaning. It has nothing to do with whether other cities are entirely untouched or have simply suffered less greviously. Besides, I've pointed out that it is eminently plausible that the Martians would concentrate their spearhead on taking out London. You have provided no evidence to the contrary other than suggesting that the Martians are so dumb that they were landing randomly.

But the book clearly suggests that London was hit quite a bit harder/earlier than the surrounding countryside of England itself, and this makes perfect sense. Nothing about bread crossing the Channel indicates that urban centers in the rest of Europe went untouched. But if they did go untouched, it's hardly remarkable, given how short a duration the entire invasion covers.

The narrator doesn't speak extensively on the Martian's planning of their invasion. He makes suppositions about a subject that occupied his mind considerably once the invasion was underway. "Why are these creatures here?" His speculations are not presented as fact, other than by evidence that the Martians couldn't have come here by accident.

And as I said before, telescopes can pick out major industrial activity (particularly the heavily polluting sort of industry at the turn of the century) quite easily. They have a great deal more difficulty spotting microbes. Even assuming that the aliens could see individual humans from Mars well enough to see disease (which would be rather a stretch for the very best telescopes theoretically possible), most of the obvious causes of grossly visible disease are non-infectious in nature.

Look, I will continue to regard "as you know, audience that lives in the same world as me," digressions as a flaw in stories I read. Because it is one of the major errors that writers make using fictional narrators.

In the light of 2006 knowledge, knowing what is now known about Mars and its thin atmosphere, that a telescope observing the Earth from Mars might have a pretty good view. But if one is starting with no preconceptions, one must actually understand what one is looking at---and that's far from certain. I suppose the classic example of that are the "canals" of Mars.

(I used to have a National Geographic map of Mars up on my wall. Once, I happened to take off my glasses and squinted at it---and, for a moment, I could see several of the major canals, plain as day. But they're not there, and weren't when I put my glasses on and looked again. And what could I have been seeing on a latter-day post-canal-era map?)

Y'know, you seem to be arguing from the position that H. G. Wells can do no wrong. I see him as I can see any other writer and his works. Few, if any, writers produce works that are absolutely perfect, even if they have sold steady for over a century, been made into radio shows and movies, and have inspired generations of readers and writers. Certainly I can see and intelligently discuss flaws in any work.

I have no idea why you regard it as a flaw that Wells had his narrator concentrate on the things that seemed important to him (meaning the narrator) personally.

If you want to talk about flaws, like aliens from another planet being able to use human blood for sustanance...that could be interesting.

But you're arguing against something Wells did that was an important element in the characterization of the narrator. It's worth noting that while the narrator's personal history might be based on Wells own experiences, he is not Wells. He is a fictional person with different attitudes, beliefs, and of course a history of living through an alien invasion.