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Post by quaderni on Jan 17, 2005 0:10:18 GMT
In reality, Wells himself wrote 'The Man of the Year Million' for Punch in 1893. Thus, the narrator's reference to it is somewhat postmodern in its ironic self-referentiality. Nice touch. Actually, the Martian evolutionary history reminds one of the Eloi/Morlock evolution, too - except that on Mars, the intellectual leaders remained formidable and powerful - their bodies degenerated, like the Eloi, but their drive and intellect did not. The Morlocks on Mars became spineless shells, literally - and they were the ones being eaten. Actually, the sex thing in _The War_ is very curious indeed. There was a long discussion in biological science, during the 19th century, about all the problems involved with sexual dimorphism and how it played out in the social world of humans in the relations between men and women. The fact that the Martians were assexual suggests that their 'race', if you use the Victorian lingo, had abolished inner-species conflict and could set out on dominating others. The Martians have an odd empathy about each other, too. The last Martian sobbing away - what, for itself? its comrades - and how they sadistically exterminate the artillery brigade after the one machine gets decapitated and then drag away their fallen comrade in an odd funeral dirge. Just random thoughts, really.
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Post by kingofthemorlocks on Jan 17, 2005 21:00:15 GMT
how they sadistically exterminate the artillery brigade after the one machine gets decapitated and then drag away their fallen comrade in an odd funeral dirge. I like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. II explanation: They did not want us getting a hold of their technology (much as I disliked most of Vol II, it had its moments)
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Post by Bayne on Jan 18, 2005 11:19:41 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]Thanks for the info and Puch pic! Does anyone know if the article still in print anywhere?
Geis, the pic you found was done by a very talented friend of mine. Hopefully he'll do some more WotW pics. [/glow]
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Post by McTodd on Jan 18, 2005 11:51:52 GMT
As far as I know, it isn't - but, then, I don't know nuttin'...
However, I have the article (and the whole Punch pic, accompanying the Punch verse) at home.
Double however... My home computer is knackered...
Treble however, I have a scanner at work (only for this week, I move to a scannerless environment next week) so I'll try and scan it all in.
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Post by Bayne on Jan 22, 2005 21:44:27 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]Cool! Thanks! [/glow]
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JonT
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Post by JonT on Apr 6, 2005 18:45:03 GMT
i think that the martians used in the jeff wayne pc game are what wells thought they would look like, i really like them, they are quite scary and evil looking
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Post by Bayne on Apr 9, 2005 1:22:21 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]They are very good but the eyes aren't really disc like, not circular enough, also the differing tentacle lengths seem to have some dedicated for locomotion wheras Wells seems to suggest all the tentacles were both for locomotion and for manipulating their machines. Also the beak seems odd too. [/glow]
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Xav
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Post by Xav on Apr 11, 2005 23:36:00 GMT
I sometimes think that Wells Martians verge on the impossible...so many conflicts when it all comes under scrutiny. Take, for example, the tentacles. Almost all creatures use jointed legs, because tentacles are simply not strong enough to support heavy weights...even sixteen of them. Add to that, the position of the tentacles in a crescent round the mouth suggests that if a Martian wants to stand up (on Mars), he would find his face looking at the ground, otherwise he would topple over backwards. If he did manage to move around on his tentacles it would be a difficult balancing act and what about being able to manipulate things...would he have enough tentacles available for that?
I tend to think of them as being permanently cradled in a machine of some sort...probably something like the one showing a Martian draining the blood out of a human...six legged with all options for healthy comfortable living, including several humans in the back for further sustenance.
I also rather like to think that the Martians were not that much advanced over Humans and that the greater bulk of their brains was given over to handling the telepathic nature of their communications and also to controlling their machinery. As has been suggested elsewhere, this would tend to reduce an individual to subservience and would account for the general air of coldness and ruthlessness.
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Post by Bayne on Apr 12, 2005 0:05:33 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]I dunno, elephant trunks seem mighty strong and they are made from the same sort of muscle.
Certainly the makers of The Future Is Wild had no problem with cephalopods evolving to move on land. I've seen otopuses crawl about on land with no difficulty whatsoever.[/glow]
[glow=red,2,300]In the lower Gravity of Mars they'd surely be fine. As for balencing, in The Crystal Egg Wells had the martians hopping when not flying, Kangaroos look ungainly but boy can they move! I'd see 16 tentacles available for locomotion when unburdened, the advantage of all 16 again for tool use when sitting down and 8 for each task on the move using tools. I think 8 seems plenty to bounce around in Mars gravity leaving the other 8 to manipulate the controls of a portable heatray generator![/glow]
[glow=red,2,300]humans are learning to control technology with their minds, albeit not broadcast (see current research of mind/computer interfaces being developed for the severely disabled) so unless all that brain is a big brainwave antenna I'd say all that brain is mostly for thinking. That means that they are intellectually far in advance of us and give us as much or less thought than we give lab monkeys, lab rats, cockroaches or maybe raw carrot. Some plants show signs of reaction to damage. In animals we call that pain. The Martians show as much concern for us as a vegetarian chomping down on a raw screaming carrot, nibbling slowly and feeling good about themselves for not eating the dead cow.
Bigger brains after all means merely more smart and high IQ has no bearing on the amount of morals or ethics someone might have.[/glow]
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Xav
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Post by Xav on Apr 12, 2005 5:26:56 GMT
I hope I do not have to start to analyse the uses for an elephants trunk and compare it to an elephants leg? I also have seen octopus on the beach and they dont like it one tiny bit. Show me one higher order creature that uses tentacles....
The Crystal Egg I regard as having no connection whatsoever with the WotW....totally different story about different creatures although I have seen the usual optimists stretch things to a rather impossible limit.
I hate getting drawn into this kind of argument...but its been done before....What is progress or superiority? How is it measured? If it is warfare, then today if the Martians were to arrive...we would totally destroy them, if they arrived with the same weaponry...in other words they would be no more than 100 years in advance of we miserables Earthlings. This means that either we are very fast growing or they are damn slow. I dont care which. If it was 'political' (how can we apply this...) or social organisation, then I submit we would be their inferiors. Perhaps.What about music, art, poetry.....Do Martians have their equivalent or parallels? We do not know.
Wells said the Martians were telepathic. Well....OK....how much of the brain would be given over to that activity? I submitted that it would be a considerable amount, leaving less for any individual to use and be inventive... because I dont think their weapons or their tactics were really very advanced against our teeming millions and that suggests that their mighty brains were used for something other than advancing their species.
These guys weighed about 400 lbs on Earth...no way could they move around on those tentacles. On Mars, maybe 130 -- 140 lbs which although it is a more acceptable figure...DID they use these things for moving? Not if their technology was such that they each had an individual vehicle that served instead.
Of course, quite strong arguments can be advanced for the Martians as they stand...crawl. Mostly we just accept them for what they are....bogey-men of the worst possible kind.....and long may they stay that way.
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Post by Lensman on Apr 12, 2005 7:10:27 GMT
No land animal uses tenacular legs. There are good reasons for this. First, skeletons give anchor points for muscles to act as levers, which is necessary if you want to stand up; that is, to do more than crawl. Second, we can "lock" our knees when standing still and maintain this pose for hours if necessary. You simply can't do that with tentacles; you'd have to strain your muscles every second to hold yourself up. Altho I try to interpret WotW as much as possible as though everything Wells said is accurate, in this case it simply is not believable to say the Martians walked around on their tentacles on Mars. Nor is it reasonable to suppose they could support themselves on "legs" which are bunched on either side of their mouth. The leverage for that simply wouldn't work in anything more than microgravity. It's much more reasonable to assume the Martians were cripples who relied on their machines to move around even on Mars.
Bayne: Your statement that octopi move around easily on land puzzles me. That doesn't fit with the biology I know. Even small octopi would have a problem with not being able to breathe air. And the cube/square law indicates that larger octopi would have even more mobility problems than small ones. Is there some evidence posted to the Internet that octopi hunt on land, or voluntarily crawl up onto land?
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Xav
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Post by Xav on Apr 12, 2005 22:52:03 GMT
I totally agree, Lensman, a nice analysis.
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Xav
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Post by Xav on Apr 13, 2005 7:31:05 GMT
There is the additional problem:grip. I was forcibly reminded today on how marvellous our hands are when I used a small screwdriver to take 4 tiny screws out of the back of a calculator and then later on to lift and move some heavy logs...such a huge range of strength and dexterity. I somehow think that a Martian would be tying its tentacles into knots trying to do some of the things that we can do with just two arms and ten fingers. Very difficult to imagine such tentacles being used to both support the weight of the creature and be also to use a screwdriver on a calculator. I would think that the task would be split with the strongest ones being used as support and mobility and the rest as manipulative...but I still go along with the idea that they are atrophied wrecks that need machinery to get about in.
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Post by Bayne on Apr 15, 2005 1:20:06 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]Regarding octopi on land. I have seen with my own eyes octopi with tentacle spans over 6 inches across climb out of rock pools and crawl across rocks, climbing where necessary, to reach other pools and/or the ocean. Yep, they can't breath air hence why they needed to get back to the water. In The Future is wild they postulated that in the future cephalopods would evolve the ability to breathe air. They predicted swamp-crawling critters, lemur like tree-dwelling critters and even elephant-sized critters walking on short stumpy tentacles. The musculature of tentacles isn't straight but instead a criss-cross of woven muscle fibres where the outer muscles support the inner muscles giving them a great deal of strength and mobility. Having snorkled with Cuttlefish I can tell you they have quite a grip. I have seen a documentary where octopi open tightly closed screw-top jars to get at food inside and where they had frequent troubles with a largeish octopus that was always finding feindish means of getting out of it's tank and crawling about. The documantary was on the intelligence of cephalopods that I saw on the Discovery Channel. I've seen leeches (In fact I had a pet one once) raise themselves up pretty well and they are invertebrates. The Future Is Wild was supposed to have been made by bilogists, one would hope they knew the limitations of tentacles when they came up with their hypothetical evoltionary developments. As we are arguing based off the book then it is certain the martians could, and frequently did, crawl on Earth. It is stated that they were seen trying to raise themselves up on their tentacles so clearly they could 'stand' on Mars at least. Wells says "There is reason to suppose that on Mars they may have progressed upon them with some facility," while he doesn't out-and-out say they did, he certainly meant for us to consider that they could. Regarding orientation, if the tentacles projected forward from the mouth then certainly they may have stood face downwards. Of course the eyes might be set adjusted to this leaving the crawling martians staring up at the sky. With the fluidic freedom of a boneless structure suported by (I think they were called hydrostatic?) musculature that might not be a problem. The tentacles could have faced downwards from the mouth with acctuating muscles spread out across the 'head' though so facing downwards isn't necessarily going to be the case. Regarding Wells story The Crystal Egg... There is plenty of similarites in Wells two depictions of Martians... tentacles, large heads, certainly the feeding habits seem ominously similar... In The Crystal Egg we either have two subgroups of Martians, winged and hopping, or the wings are an apparatus worn by the hopping Martians. Either way Wells is clearly ruminating along the same lines of evolutionary speculation so either The Crystal Egg is a preliminary story using the same Martians or a similar story using similar Martians. Wells still seemed to think that tentacled Martians could hop about on their tentacles. For all we know the Martians could have had vertebrae or cartliginous rings in their tentacles for increased strength/support though Wells anatomy lessons probably would have mentioned such. Regarding Net resources on cephalopods www.tonmo.com was good last I looked at it. Regarding telepathy.. it all depends on how big the transceiver needs to be. I'd expect it'd be some sort of dedicated organ in, or part of, the brain. Even if it was huge as the Martian brain took up the greater part of it's 'body' and it was about the size of a bear even if only a rather small part of that was dedicated to thinking It would likely be massively larger than a humans. If on the other hand the telepathy was only short ranged and didn't require a good deal of space (as is suggested by the Martians siren-like communication when away from the pits) then as Intelligence is generally considered as a brain size to body size ratio (though this is occassionally disputed) that would make Martians pretty darn smart. Of course we have no further facts as to the telepathy than we do to the raised tentacular locomotion, both being speculations on part of the narrator! [/glow]
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Post by lanceradvanced on Apr 15, 2005 2:40:54 GMT
Wells said the Martians were telepathic. Well....OK....how much of the brain would be given over to that activity? I submitted that it would be a considerable amount, leaving less for any individual to use and be inventive... It wouldn't have to be that much, perhaps a pound of specilized muscle tissue, like that of an electic eel, to produce a signal, and then some form or receptors, perhaps like a sharks, to be able to dectect the bursts, I don't see any need to for the various nerves controling it to be any larger than a human's speach centers. As for their mobilty, there is one instance where the martian apparently crowled out of it's tripod hood, and effected repairs of the smashed leg..
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Post by Lensman on Apr 15, 2005 21:14:57 GMT
In The Future is wild they postulated that in the future cephalopods would evolve the ability to breathe air. They predicted swamp-crawling critters, lemur like tree-dwelling critters and even elephant-sized critters walking on short stumpy tentacles. The musculature of tentacles isn't straight but instead a criss-cross of woven muscle fibres where the outer muscles support the inner muscles giving them a great deal of strength and mobility. Certainly creatures with tentacles can *crawl* about on land. Snails and slugs, like octopi, are mollusks, and obviously can crawl about on land. And certainly, they can briefly raise themselves up if they want to look around. It's the *walking* that I'm pointing out is impossible, even on Mars. Nature has had billions of years to evolve creatures that can walk using tentacles. The fact that there is not one single one is a good indication that it's impractical, for reasons I've already given. Regarding orientation, if the tentacles projected forward from the mouth then certainly they may have stood face downwards. Of course the eyes might be set adjusted to this leaving the crawling martians staring up at the sky. With the fluidic freedom of a boneless structure suported by (I think they were called hydrostatic?) musculature that might not be a problem. Certainly tentacles can have great strength, for gripping, pulling things in and yes, unscrewing jars. But they just don't have the right leverage for walking, or for supporting heavy weights at the ends of their tentacles. If an elephant wants to lift a heavy weight with its trunk it grips it near the base of the trunk-- not out at the end. All land animals which walk have skeletons. As I said, there's a very good reason for this. Take a jellyfish and put it on land. What happens? It flattens out, and can't even move. The book specifies the Martians had a cartilaginous skeleton. The ultimate "fluidic freedom of a boneless structure" gives you the jellyfish. Octopi are not jellyfish, of course. Their flesh has more density; they're "rubbery" rather than "watery". Yes, octopi have hydrostatic chambers in their tentacles which can give them a certain amount of rigidity upon demand. But that's still a far cry from a skeleton, and it would still require the octopus to strain its muscles every moment to hold itself up-- let alone "walk"-- under any appreciable amount of gravity, on Earth or Mars. Yes, octopi can crawl by dragging themseves across land for short distances, and so can the Martians. I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing that they can "walk" in anything less than microgravity. Under microgravity you get conditions similar to being suspended in water, and octopi can indeed "walk" underwater along the sea floor; I've seen films where they do just that. Regarding Wells story The Crystal Egg... There is plenty of similarites in Wells two depictions of Martians... tentacles, large heads, certainly the feeding habits seem ominously similar... In The Crystal Egg we either have two subgroups of Martians, winged and hopping, or the wings are an apparatus worn by the hopping Martians. Either way Wells is clearly ruminating along the same lines of evolutionary speculation so either The Crystal Egg is a preliminary story using the same Martians or a similar story using similar Martians. Wells still seemed to think that tentacled Martians could hop about on their tentacles. Certainly Wells envisioned the Martians walking about on their tentacles. We can stipulate that "since it's Wells' novel he gets to decide the facts." And in fact that's my position on the intravenous "feeding" technique, where other forum members have argued that this was a misinterpretation on the part of those dissecting the dead Martians. I don't see this as a matter of being "right" or "wrong". It's a matter of what importance we place on what the novel says vs. what we find believable or supportable in the light of modern science. I prefer to think that Wells was correct in what he said as far as can be supported, but in this one particular case I think what he says is insupportable. Since the Martians are never observed walking in the novel, it's merely speculated that they can on Mars, I prefer to think that they cannot. And yes, "The Crystal Egg" shows similar physique for the Martians, suggesting that perhaps it's in the same "world" as WotW. That's a reasonable argument, but again it's not a viewpoint I share. The description of the "frog-like" Martians in the short story doesn't appear to me to be the same as the fairly complete description of the Martians in WotW.
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Xav
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Post by Xav on Apr 15, 2005 23:10:58 GMT
Lets get down to some figures at this point.
The Martians were 4 feet in diameter and lets say half of the volume was body cavities...big lungs and whatever. Use Vol = (4pi R^3)/3 and make the density 65lb/cuft This gives about 1,000 lbs. These things were massive.
The tentacles were said to be "whip like"....
There is no way these things could crawl, in my opinion, let alone stand. On Mars they would weigh in at well over 300 lbs...again, crawling and standing would be impossible, or almost anyway.
These are facts, they are not Wells entertaining fiction.
Short muscular tentacles may well have done the job, but whip-like definitely not. Then there is the problem of getting to grips with something in order to pull or push this massive body about. The ground in the pit is just gravel, earth, stones and so on. It does not have very much that could be used to get a purchase. Then the Martian...assuming he could get a tentacle round a rock....has to pull himself along on his naked bum....I dont see this as being a very advanced mode of travel. The only other alternative would be if the tentacles had a sharp end that could be driven into the ground...perhaps the creature could pull itself along in that way. For a very advanced creature, I think they are incredibly careless, as individuals. The first one crawls out of the cylinder and with a shout of..."Oh, bugger!!" falls off the edge. I wonder how far it would have fallen. Well, apparently it didnt come to much harm, because it looks as if they all dropped out in a similar manner. But it was not a good start. Then all that huffing and puffing and crawling...their mates didnt seem to help them. I wonder if it is because they were telepathic, substantially so, and the individual was but a component of the greater corporate body? That would also explain their alien coldness, lack of compassion and merciless cruelty. Someone suggested elsewhere that they seemed more like animals than anything remotely human. An interesting point. Lots more to say here, but I will let the figures speak instead.
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Post by jeffwaynefan on Apr 15, 2005 23:17:41 GMT
"Use Vol = (4pi R^3)/3 and make the density 65lb/cuft" Am I the only one at this point scratching his head . Im sure it will become clearer once explained. Its late, that's my excuse (and Im sticking to it ;D)
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Apr 15, 2005 23:22:53 GMT
Four-thirds x (pi x cube of the radius), volume of a sphere; density, not far off a human male (around 55-60 lbs per cubic foot, a little less than Xav quotes, but I only culled that figure from a quick 'n' dirty google search, so my figures could be off or his, though hardly enough to materially alter his argument). On the other hand (ho ho...), there were sixteen tentacles, so if, say, ten were involved in locomotion on Mars, each one only has to bear around 30 lbs (with the weight on Mars being 300 lbs, as Xav points out). I'm not an expert on tentacles and their capabilities, but octopi can crawl across land (not too far, because they dry out), and they're not even adapted for land dwelling. Maybe if one thinks of the tentacle in terms of an elephant's trunk, that might help? An elephant's trunk is very flexible, very strong when lifting weights (up to a quarter-ton for a large bull) but I don't know what a trunk is like in the opposite direction pushing, which is what a Martian tentacle is doing when bearing the Martian's weight. Of course, elephants were genetically engineered by aliens... www.weeklyuniverse.com/skies/skies12.htm
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Post by Bayne on Apr 16, 2005 7:22:03 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]While the fossil record on this planet doesn't have critters that walk on tentacles.. who was it that first said[/glow][glow=red,2,300]?
Early life on earth took on all manner of weird shapes that have little to do with latter forms of symetry. I've heard it argued amongst academics that if different critters survived the early mass extinctions then all life on earth could have two heads or a spiral-form of symetry!
On a small scale don't caterpillas use the same sort of muscles? Maybe we need to get hold of one of the 'experts' from the future is wild to show us their justification for tree dwelling gibbon niche occupying cephalopods and elephant sized critters walking on tentacles?
McTodd makes some good points about the distribution of weight across multiple tentacles. I'm also always wary of limitations on life being proven with mathematical fomulae, having seen arguments showing the impossibility of running the 7 minute mile, the impossibility of the bumble bee's flight, water-bound cold-blooded sauropods (Bob Barker has a nice drawing of his view on this issue) etc.
When does Wells mention the tentacled Martians having cartillage? I thought that was only in regards to the bipeds.
In The Crystal Egg I see little in the descriptions that does not tally with the War Martians... The initial description of the 'face' does give a more humanoid initial impression, however this could just be the way Cave describes the same features that the Narrator does in WotW. There is the small body of course, but this could be the driving apparatus for the wings (fleshy or mechanical) and it's existance or absence is not mentioned on the wingless Martians. We also have a predatory occurance involving an apelike victim and a huge Silvery walking machine (testing of a tripod perhaps?), then there is the viewing and studying of Earth for purposes potentially sinister... if they aren't the same Martians then they are pretty darn similar!
Lensman, I definately agree with you on the Intravenous feeding. Unless the narwhal-spike was in Wells early drafts then I'm very much in favour of mechanical syringe/transfusion feeding. [/glow]
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