There are no flying saucers in H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds. I know, I know. The martians arrive on earth in cylinders. Far less exciting.
Don’t worry, though – a large number of publishers over the years either haven’t read the book, or have been happy to disregard the trivial ‘fact’ that a seminal science fiction text doesn’t conform to one of science fiction’s seminal stereotypes. That’s why you can enjoy this image with me:
Some excellent soul or other has put an extraordinary number of the different covers of this book online for all to see. It’s a splendid idea, especially once you start using them to crunch stats. I can’t see any cylinders at all, for instance, whilst the tripods (the vehicles used by the martians once they reach the earth’s surface) form by far the largest subcategory of illustrations. The fourth largest category is “Screaming Humans Running at You“, which I particularly enjoy.
What’s interesting, though, is simply to look at the list in chronological order and see how each generation have attempted to market this extremely popular work in different (and similar) ways. I did a project on book covers as a master’s student – it’s a line of inquiry that I’ve more or less had to dispense with in this project. Most of the short stories I’m dealing with don’t have covers of their own, appearing as they do in periodicals. But it’s a fascinating way of thinking about books – how a cover frames your perceptions of a text – and I’d love to do something on it again one day.
I leave you with two more favourites from the collection. One is a favourite because it makes no sense whatsoever, the other because it makes a little too much sense… please enjoy.
Will Tattersdill
Will – this is fun! Even though, as you say, you’re not looking at book covers are you going to look at illustarations in the periodicals? what about the adverts, notices, etc too?
Hey Sharon! Illustration is definitely something I’m going to be looking at – a lot of the things I’m reading have some really great pictures to go with them, and it would be cruel and unusual to ignore them! As for adverts – well, I did an essay on adverts in the Strand for my master’s as well, and I find it very difficult to skim past the advert sections when I’m reading the magazines. I’m sure I’ll manage to work it in somehow…
PS. Actually, I recently found an advert which was a fabulous drawing of a box of Beecham’s tablets as some kind of crazy space-Zeppelin, flying up to heal the grateful man in the moon. This aligns pretty much perfectly with everything I want to talk about…