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Post by mctoddridesagain on Jul 28, 2005 8:50:47 GMT
Aye, that's why I reckon it's set in 1903.
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Post by Lensman on Aug 6, 2005 4:08:16 GMT
Most of the clues for the date are given in the first chapter.
"During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen..."
Presumably this was the casting of the huge space cannon.
"Peculiar markings, as yet unexplained, were seen... during the next two oppositions. [paragraph] The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars approached opposition..."
The "six years ago" is confusing until we realize (upon reading the final chapter) that the Narrator is recording this story six years after the events. So we can ignore that remark. The pertinent data here is that the events of the story begin no earlier than the third opposition following 1894. Consulting the historic records for Mars oppositions:
1894 October 20 22:16 1896 December 11 05:42 1899 January 18 23:32 1901 February 22 06:11 1903 March 29 07:31 1905 May 08 20:07 1907 July 06 15:28
Presuming the opposition referred to is the third following 1894, and not a later one, the year of the beginning of the story in The War of the Worlds is 1901. And indeed this is the best year from an esthetic point of view to present a story of world-changing events. Arthur C. Clarke set "2001: A Space Odyssey" in the first year of a new millennium, and I believe Wells set his story in the first year of a new century.
"...a huge outbreak of incandescent gas... had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth..."
This is of absolutely no help whatsoever, as it does not specify a month. Clearly it is not the "August" referred to in an earlier paragraph; that referred to the date of a magazine reporting an observation made during an earlier opposition.
"Forty millions of miles it [Mars] was from us--more than forty millions of miles of void."
"...flying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles, came the Thing they were sending us..."
This addresses the question of how long it took the Martians to travel to earth. Of course, we don't have any idea of just how many thousands of miles per minute they were traveling. Let's assume a reasonable minimum: 1000 miles per minute. This yields 40,000,000 / 1000 = 40,000 minutes of travel time, or about 27.8 days. Of course, they may have been coming somewhat faster. I believe Charles has stated it took them about 2 weeks to arrive. I'm not sure what he's basing that on, but if we assume 2000 miles per minute then indeed we get two weeks. Some readers have suggested that altho the Martians launched their invasion during 1901 it did not arrive until the next year (presumably because current NASA plans to send a manned flight to Mars would require a trip of 6-12 months), but if what the Narrator says is even remotely close to the truth then this is impossible.
"The night was warm... [paragraph] That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from Mars, just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the first one."
Clearly this takes place during the same period leading up to the opposition. Presumably the Martians' space cannon is buried in the ground, as was Verne's space cannon in From the Earth to the Moon. Since the cannon cannot be moved, the Martians must fire it at the instant it's aimed in precisely the right direction, which would happen only once each Martian day. So the cylinders were launched (and presumably arrive) almost exactly one day apart.
The fact that the night was "warm" is not reconcilable with the historical data. A late February night in England is not going to be "warm". In fact, some have given this as a reason to suggest the opposition in question was the next one, in 1903. But that only changes the time of year by a month. Unless someone can present a historical temperature record from England indicating March 29, 1903 was unusually warm, I remain unconvinced.
Instead, it seems likely that Wells ignored the actual historical date when writing the novel. Authors do this quite commonly. In fact, authors have a saying: "Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story." Trying to use historic data to fix the date of a fictional story is rarely successful. See, for instance, The Annotated Sherlock Holmes for various articles by the Baker Street Irregulars showing the difficulty of finding the "real" date of various Sherlock Holmes stories from dates and descriptions given in the stories. Philip Jose Farmer had similar problems in trying to fix the "real" dates of the Doc Savage stories in his Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life.
Later in WotW, the month is given as June (chapters I-17 and II-3 both specify "June" without giving any more specific date). If we ignore the historical data indicating the 1901 opposition happened during February, and assume it happened a month or less before the cylinders started landing, then we can reconcile the "warm" night with events later in the novel. If indeed it took only two to four weeks for the Martians to travel to earth, then the launch of their capsules happened in May or possibly early June. This is entirely reconcilable with a warm night in southern England.
Of course, if we decide the month of the historical 1901 opposition is not that of Wells' story, then that calls the year into question also. If we want the historical date to match Wells' story, then we must move the setting to 1905, when the opposition occurred during early May. That would fit with a date of June for the invasion, and it's at least possible (if rare) to have a warm night in early May in southern England.
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Post by Lensman on Aug 6, 2005 4:49:11 GMT
The website calculator gives a distance of .639 AU (about 59.2 million miles) for the 1903 opposition and a distance of .677 (about 62.7 million miles) for the 1903. That's a difference of only 6%. At the speed the Martians were traveling, that difference would have only been around 1.2 to 2.4 days of travel.
However, it does imply the travel from Mars to Earth took over half again as long as my earlier figures indicate, since the journey is more than 60 million miles instead of the 40 million Wells specifies. (Or, we presume that in the "universe" of WotW it was the 1901 opposition that was the minimum-distance one, and not the 1894 opposition... as I presume the opposition happened in May and not in February.)
I hadn't realized the difference in opposition distances would vary so significantly from year to year. Clearly Wells didn't either! It would seem he looked up the data for 1894 and used only those figures.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Aug 6, 2005 13:59:20 GMT
And those are exactly the points I made on the page before this. The only dispute is over whether the invasion occurred in 1901 or 1903. I manintain, though with no great partiality, 1903, simply on the basis that the opposition occurred in late March/early April that year, a time of year when it is conceivable for there to be a 'warm evening' in, or around, London (and I should know, I live there). In late February there's no chance.
I don't believe that there are any strong grounds for supposing that Wells used 1901 for symbolic reasons - had he been so concerned about symbolism he would have written '...and in the first year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment', not '...and early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment'. Again, though, it's open to interpretation.
On the other hand, the 1901 opposition in February gives the Martians another five weeks to reach Earth, compared with the 1903 opposition. So that's a mark in 1901's favour.
And I rule out 1905 because with the opposition occurring in May, it gives the Martians only around five or six weeks in total to reach Earth, which doesn't seem likely.
The only thing that is certain is that Wells' invasion does not occur before 1901.
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Post by Lensman on Aug 6, 2005 21:22:56 GMT
And those are exactly the points I made on the page before this. Since there still seemed to be some argument over certain points of the text, including a claim for "12 August", I thought it would be useful to gather all the text references into one post which can be used as a reference point for future arguments/discussion. Since questions about the date keep coming up in various threads, I also wanted to gather all the info into an article I can refer to later or re-post to future threads if necessary. Sorry if I annoyed you by repeating what you'd already said. (At least, I find it annoying when that happens to me.) I manintain, though with no great partiality, 1903, simply on the basis that the opposition occurred in late March/early April that year, a time of year when it is conceivable for there to be a 'warm evening' in, or around, London (and I should know, I live there). In late February there's no chance. Thank you for this info. I've never visited England and had the impression the climate was colder there. had he been so concerned about symbolism he would have written '...and in the first year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment', not '...and early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment'. Again, though, it's open to interpretation. Yes, Wells deliberately left the date vague. If he had specified the year, we wouldn't be arguing over it. On the other hand, the 1901 opposition in February gives the Martians another five weeks to reach Earth, compared with the 1903 opposition. So that's a mark in 1901's favour. I take it, then, that you reject a literal interpretation of the phrase "drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles" ? The only thing that is certain is that Wells' invasion does not occur before 1901. "Yes, yes; with yours my figures do agree!" -- W.S. Gilbert, Pirates of Penzance
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Aug 7, 2005 0:54:28 GMT
All this inserting quotes malarkey is too much hassle at this time of night, so I'll answer numerically: 1. It didn't annoy me, I see your point about summarising in one place. 2. February's evil, but late March is surprisingly variable. It can be temperate (not exactly warm as such), it can snow. That's England's famous weather for you - go figure! 3. Indeed, I was just making a point that you can't be too sure about the symbolism. 4. It's a terribly vague comment; how many are '...so many thousands of miles every minute'? Two? Ten? A hundred? It's not overly helpful, and makes little difference to giving them a few extra (or fewer) weeks of travel time. 5. 'I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical, I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical...' We could do with him!
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Post by Lensman on Aug 14, 2005 8:28:21 GMT
And in further support of your argument about a night in late March being described as "warm", I'm reminded of some of my friends who visited England and were amused at the locals apologizing for the "terribly hot" weather in the low 80's. Here in Kansas City it regularly gets into the 90s during summer, with uncomfortably high humidity on top of that. "Terribly hot" here would be in the low 100's. (Fahrenheit scale, of course... which may not mean much to you if you're used to thinking in Celsius terms.) In other words: "Warm" is a relative term. Re your aquaintance with matters mathematical: You are the very model of a modern WOTW forum member!
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Post by David Faltskog on Aug 14, 2005 10:45:41 GMT
Kansas eh? Just been talking to a good friend who lives in Lawrence KC. Erm...Just thought i'd mention that. D.F.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Aug 14, 2005 12:45:46 GMT
Re your aquaintance with matters mathematical: You are the very model of a modern WOTW forum member! And you're so right about 'warm' being relative - anything over about 75 fahrenheit is considered 'bleeding hot' in the UK. Warm for us is decidedly chilly for you! And the 'low 100s' is, well, quite frankly fatal...
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Post by Charles on Aug 31, 2005 16:54:44 GMT
Kansas eh? Just been talking to a good friend who lives in Lawrence KC. Erm...Just thought i'd mention that. D.F. I live in Missouri, but Lawrence is only about 40 minutes away...depending on the number of Highway Patrol cruisers, of course. Lawrence is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
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Post by broton on Sept 1, 2005 10:36:21 GMT
I hadn't realized the difference in opposition distances would vary so significantly from year to year. 40 million miles is about the minimum distance possible between Mars and Earth (about 34 million miles actually) - in their current orbits - and it can vary up to around 63 million miles
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Post by Leatherhead on Sept 2, 2005 2:18:37 GMT
another problem i see, is that the 1st cylinder is apparently buried so that just the end is protruding from the groundm so it is described as being table like. if it is flat like this, how did the lid fall off after being unscrewed?
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Post by Lensman on Sept 2, 2005 3:29:52 GMT
I think this is another case of the author being careless with the details, but happily in this case there is a clue in the text which allows us to explain away the discrepancy:
"A large portion of the cylinder had been uncovered, although its lower end was still embedded." -- I-3
Submitted, for your consideration: In the process of the locals digging it up, the cylinder's position was shifted from more-or-less vertical, closer to horizontal.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Sept 2, 2005 9:00:46 GMT
I've always wondered that about the cylinder.
However, I can't believe that a few men with shovels managed to tilt the cylinder over whilst digging - remember, this thing is bigger than a battleship of the time; thirty yards across, perhaps a hundred yards long (at a guess) - it must have weighed tens of thousands of tons. It must have landed at an angle.
But, on the whole, I’m afraid we just have to mark that down as an inconsistency.
As is the fact that the Narrator isn’t woken by the sound of the cylinder crashing down. After all, considering all the walking back and forth he does at Horsell Common, he can’t live more than say, let’s be generous, four miles at the very most. Are you telling me that he, along with countless thousands, slept through a battleship-sized object smashing into the ground like a meteor, creating a huge explosion? At a time when there were no ambient sounds we now take for granted, such as late night traffic, aircraft, TV, radio, etc., to mask it?
No, we have to accept the fact that if you look microscopically, as we are because there are dozens of us with nothing better to do than to pore for months at a time over every single word debating all possible meanings and implications, there are many minor inconsistencies. Wells was damn busy – he dashed WotW off at the same time as writing other novels, numerous short stories, articles and non-fiction speculation. This in an age when all he had was his trusty pen – no word processors, so no word searches, no going back and amending a word here, a phrase there, with consummate ease; no, we’re talking constant manic bouts of scrawling away in ink. Is it any wonder the odd inconsistency or mistake creeps in? If we were similarly obsessed with any other book, I’m sure we’d find as many mistakes.
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Post by Lensman on Sept 2, 2005 11:29:27 GMT
I agree with your points overall, in fact I've said much the same thing. If authors were to be held to such a high standard in being free of inconsistancies and errors that they would pass the microscopic scrutiny this forum practices, then few if any novels would ever be completed. In fact, it occurred to me even as I was making my last post the improbability of "several men wielding spades and pick-axes" being able to uncover most of an object so large in so brief a time. But Wells *did* write that they uncovered most of the cylinder. If you can believe or justify that, then you can easily justify it having shifted its position. As far as the Narrator not having heard it hit: It's even worse than that. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I was at home at that hour and writing in my study; and although my French windows face towards Ottershaw and the blind was up (for I loved in those days to look up at the night sky), I saw nothing of it. Yet this strangest of all things that ever came to earth from outer space must have fallen while I was sitting there, visible to me had I only looked up as it passed. Some of those who saw its flight say it travelled with a hissing sound. I myself heard nothing of that. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- I-2 Later on, of course, Wells accurately describes the landing of the fifth cylinder from close up as "a concussion such as I have never heard before or since". Yet altho apparently it made enuff noise in travelling thru the air that some heard a hissing sound, he did not hear it land, altho he was awake, and was near an open window which faces that direction. How can this be justified? Frankly, it can't. You'd have to invoke some sort of super-science sonic supression field, which clearly was not in operation during the landing of the fifth cylinder. I of course have no idea just how far away such an impact could be heard. It greatly depends on how fast the cylinder was travelling when it hit, and we've argued that point at *very* great length in the "Uncontrolled Landing?" thread. However, there was an incident here in Kansas City where a warehouse with a large store of dynamite blew up, and the sound was heard all over the city, probably at least 25 miles away. It's difficult for me to imagine the noise of so large an object hitting was much less noisy, even if it had slowed enuff to hit at sub-sonic velocity. After all, considering all the walking back and forth he does at Horsell Common, he can’t live more than say, let’s be generous, four miles at the very most. Looking at the map at makeashorterlink.com/?W280619BB...the area of Maybury is quite small. It looks like the distance between that and Horsell Common can't be more than 2 miles, and perhaps slightly less. That's assuming, of course, that the areas of Maybury and Horsell Common were the same in 1897 as they are on this modern map. If anyone has found an online period map that shows the area in enuff detail to show Maybury, Horsell and Ottershaw, I'd like to see it. Maybury is not to be found on the period map I have; perhaps it's just an area within Woking, as it appears to be on the modern map I've given the link to.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Sept 2, 2005 13:13:56 GMT
Two miles sounds about right. I'd forgotten that the Narrator is actually awake and working in his study with the windows open, which makes it even worse. Every once in a while, an unexploded German bomb is found, and occasionally they have to detonate them. Even a few hundred pounds of explosive, which might blast a crater a few yards across, makes a hell of a bang, you can hear it for miles.
At the end of the day, though, some things simply cannot be explained away. They are mistakes. They are lapses in decent plotting. They do not stand up to scrutiny, and no matter how hard one may try, sometimes nothing can be done to explain them away.
On the other hand, one can just take the approach that it's a rattling good story, with many meaningful layers, and get on with reading it and hang the little glitches.
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Post by Lensman on Sept 2, 2005 19:36:57 GMT
On the other hand, one can just take the approach that it's a rattling good story, with many meaningful layers, and get on with reading it and hang the little glitches. Damn straight. But that doesn't stop me from fantasizing about jumping into the saddle of the Time Machine and going back to 1896 and boxing Wells' ears, saying "You bloody idjit! That cylinder landing in chapter two would make a whopping great bang! Why doncha have it land during a thunderstorm if you don't want the entire countryside to rise up with alarums and excursions? And while we're on about The War of the Worlds, that bit where you say p'raps microbes never evolved on Mars? Nah." Now that very last part was a bit of an in-joke. To explain, this is a story Ray Bradbury tells: One dreadful boy ran up to me and said: "That book of yours The Martian Chronicles" "Yes," I said. "On page 92, where you have the moons of mars rising in the east?" "Yeah," I said. "Nah," he said. So I hit him.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Sept 2, 2005 21:01:31 GMT
One dreadful boy ran up to me and said: "That book of yours The Martian Chronicles" "Yes," I said. "On page 92, where you have the moons of mars rising in the east?" "Yeah," I said. "Nah," he said. So I hit him. Brilliant! ;D I love that phrase - 'one dreadful boy'...
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