The BBC's new WAR OF THE WORLDS adaptation gets an airdate

The BBC's new three-part mini-series based on H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds has gotten an airdate. The series will start on Sunday 17 November (that's this Sunday), airing immediately after His Dark Materials.

The new drama promises to be a more faithful adaptation of Wells' original novel, retaining the period setting (although moved forward slightly to the Edwardian era rather than the Victorian). Most screen adaptations of the book favour moving the action to a more contemporary setting, such as the 1953 and 2005 movies which both re-cast the action in modern America.

Trailer for the BBC's WAR OF THE WORLDS released

The BBC has unveiled its trailer for its forthcoming mini-series based on H.G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds.

Unlike most adaptations, such as the classic 1953 film and the 2005 Tom Cruise vehicle, this new series hews much closer to Wells' novel and is set in the same time period as the book. Apart from the little-known (and terrible) Pendragon Pictures film (also released in 2005), very few adaptations have actually tried to adapt the book in the particulars of plot and setting, so it will be interesting to see how this attempt fares. Certainly the trailer looks impressive and the cast, including Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting) and Rafe Spall (Hot Fuzz), is promising.

The mini-series is set to air in the UK this autumn.

The Japanese Devil Fish Girl by Robert Rankin

It is 1895. Ten years have passed since the Martian assault on Earth. The British Empire, 'back-engineering' recovered Martian technology, has conquered Mars with germ warfare and now treats with the denizens of Venus and Jupiter on an equal footing. A great spaceport has been built in London, a vast airship known as the Empress of Mars is touring the world and showing the British flag, and Venusian missionaries are now visiting Earth. With such wonders unfolding, showman Professor Coffin is finding interest in his pickled Martian specimen evaporating. When his zany (sorry, assistant) George Fox is informed that it his destiny to find the mythical Japanese Devil Fish Girl, Coffin sells his worldly possessions to fund an exciting and dangerous round-the-world trip to find his, sorry, their fame and fortune.


The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions: A Novel by Robert Rankin is a humorous semi-sequel to The War of the Worlds and is, very blatantly, an attempt at a 'steampunk epic' (much is made of Rankin's status as the very first Fellow of the Victorian Steampunk Society). Rankin delights in tearing up the timeline, which doesn't mesh very well with either War of the Worlds (which takes place very late in the 19th Century, with references made to a book published in 1893, but here is retconned to 1885) or established history: Charles Babbage and Charles Darwin are both still around, despite having died decades earlier, whilst Adolf Hitler cameos as a young man despite only being six years old in real life at the time. Of course, one doesn't read Rankin for historical accuracy or serious attention to detail. His books are comical romps, sometimes with hints of more interesting things going on.

The Japanese Devil Fish Girl is certainly a fun romp, and a slightly stronger novel than his previous book that I'd read, The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (though it isn't quite as funny). The structure is better, with George Fox's misadventures (to some degree episodic) on the Empress of Mars giving a spine to the story as misfortune befalls him, whilst with the redoubtable Professor Coffin Rankin gives us a more complex character than normal, although Fox is cut from the same cloth as just about every one of his other heroes, from Cornelius Murphy through Toy City's Jack. The pace is furious and it's unlikely you'll be bored, but there's also a lack of depth. In particularly, the shift from adventures in remote corners of the world back to London at the end of the novel is somewhat jarring.

On the humour front, Rankin trots out quite a few of the same running gags for inspection, and you'll either laugh or give a long-suffering sigh at them depending on your degree of familiarity with the author (luckily a minigun 'like the one Blaine had in Predator' fails to appear). There's a few funny other gags elsewhere and a couple of sharp jabs at British imperialism which seems to threaten (but never achieves) satire, but towards the end of the book Rankin falls back on a comical monkey and his exploits to get laughs, which hints a little at desperation (as does the blatantly sequel-baiting finale). Oddly for a Rankin novel, this is one where the actual story is better than the humour.

The Japanese Devil Fish Girli (***½) is pretty much Another Robert Rankin novel, although shorn of connections to his other books it's a little bit more accessible to newcomers. But there is definitely the feeling that here he had a chance to break free of his comfort zone and write a more interesting story using steampunk trappings, but didn't do it. Instead he does his normal thing and does it well. The book is available now in the UK and on import in the USA.

Wertzone Classics: The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

The War of the Worlds requires little introduction. Originally published in 1898, it is one of the taproot texts of the science fiction genre, the father of all the alien invasion stories that have come along since. It was written during H.G. Wells's most astonishingly inventive and prolific period (1895-1901) in which time he also created or explored the fields of genetic engineering (The Island of Doctor Moreau), time travel (The Time Machine and, arguably, When the Sleeper Wakes) and interplanetary exploration (The First Men in the Moon), arguably the most important, and certainly one of the most impressive, sustained period of creative enterprise in the history of the genre. It's also arguably Wells's most popular and influential novel, remade, re-envisaged and adapted for other mediums many times over the past century.


The book is told mostly from the first-person viewpoint of an unnamed narrator, a philosophical writer who relates his tale matter-of-factly, possibly for a book or newspaper report (the narrator seems annoyed by other accounts of the war between the worlds and has apparently decided to set the record straight). He relates how a giant cylinder, fired from the surface of Mars, lands near his house and disgorges several alien war machines which move on three legs. The Martians are unrelentingly hostile, using a powerful 'heat ray' to destroy the military forces the British government deploys against them and harvesting humans for their blood. More cylinders and tripods arrive and southern England is overrun, sparking a massive exodus from London and the surrounding towns. The British army and navy attempt a counter-attack, managing to destroy several tripods with the use of artillery, explosives and warships, but the Martians resort to using gas warfare to clear areas ahead of their advance, ending organised resistance. In addition an alien weed takes root and begins overwhelming local wildlife and fauna.

For a book with the title of The War of the Worlds, relatively little of the war is shown, especially after the first half (in which most of the military action is related second-hand by the narrator's brother, who is attempting to escape from London by boat to the continent). In the second half, the narrator tries to make his way to Leatherhead to rendezvous with his wife, but finds himself caught near the centre of Martian-occupied territory, with alien activity too high to move about safely. He takes refuge initially with a clergyman who has been driven mad by the stress of the invasion, and later with an artilleryman who entertains fanciful visions of a worldwide resistance to the occupiers and using the Martians' own weapons against them, but is far too lazy to do any work towards this end himself.

I tried to read The War of the Worlds as a youngster and didn't get very far, possibly because the novel didn't have the requisite number of explosions and laser blasts I'd been expecting (I was about seven or eight the first time I saw the impressive 1953 movie and had been expecting something more along those lines). Rereading the book now is a revelation: this is really impressive writing and feels as fresh and vibrant now as a hundred years ago. Wells is way ahead of his time here, with his depiction of interstellar travel (albeit by being fired through space by a giant cannon), gas warfare, the placing of civilians on the front lines and an early form of a laser, but on the human level he is pitiless in exposing the foibles of his characters. The narrator is a thinker who is often paralysed by fear in the face of the Martian threat, to the point where his observations are sometimes unreliable (one moment apparently suggesting the Martians attacked England as it's the heart of the greatest empire in the world, the next suggesting that the Martians see humans as ants and take no interest in how they are organised). The artilleryman has grandiose visions but lacks the ability to translate them into action, whilst the curator's inability to reconcile his faith that God will save mankind with the mass slaughter unleashed by the aliens drives him insane. Overall the theme of The War of the Worlds appears to be nihilistic: humanity can score minor victories but the technical gulf between them and the Martians is so vast that victory is an unrealistic prospect.


The defeat of the Martians is something that has been criticised over the years for being anti-climatic, but in context it feels appropriate. At the time the science of microbiology and germs was relatively new and exciting, and the idea that the Martians (as a product of their sterile environment) might have no experience with germs and thus no defences against them is reasonable. It also highlights Wells's suggestion that the war between the two races is Darwinian: the Martians have superior intelligence and weapons but their lack of adaptation to the environment of Earth eventually destroys them. Not just humanity but the entire biosphere rejects them. Of course, this has been misinterpreted over the years, notably through a religious prism, particularly in the 1953 film which cheesily ends with people gathering together in a church and praying for a miraculous deliverance and then being granted it. But Wells's take is more mundane: humanity is lucky and has spent millions of years evolving and adapting to the biosphere to the point where it can survive and the Martians cannot, and nothing more than that.

Criticisms are few. The book's focus is perhaps weakened a little by the lengthy pause in the narrator's story as we follow his brother's tale, but this also allows us a glimpse of the wider scope of the war (and, in the case of HMS Thunder Child's famous duel with two Martian tripods, gives humanity a rare victory), but that's about it.

The War of the Worlds (*****) is a short, dark and haunting story of war, death and hopelessness, where victory only comes from sources outside of the control of the characters. Powerfully written and rich in atmosphere, it remains the finest novel of alien invasion ever published. There are many different editions available in the UK and USA.