What the martians look like...

[Xav]

Thank you McTodd, nicely put.

Yes, 30 lbs per tentacle, they might get away with it, just. They do have another problem, though.

Weight, as we all know, is the result of mass being in a gravitational field and alters as the strength of that field. The mass...or more specifically the inertia of that mass stays constant, so any change in direction on the part of a Martian is going to produce some substantial side force. As I said, a difficult balancing act. The tentacles will not be able to be spread out to form a good size base for standing....well, not for long and I cannot see that the Martian would be able to do a decent 100 yard dash, either.

I am wondering about something here....I wonder if, when they looked at Earth, they all thought..."Ye Gods, look at all that lovely water!", because I would think that they may well be very happy splashing about at Eastbourne or South End, having picnics on the beach...the old gravity problem would largely disappear. They could bring their bottles of blood with them, lie about and get a bit of a tan and then get in the old family banger and drive of home in the evening.
Just a thought.

[quaderni]

Wells's narrator hypothesizes that the Martians were able to move freely around Mars, believing that the gravitation pull was lighter on Mars than on Earth. The crab-like and utterly inhuman movements of the handling machines - or even the fighting machines - might give us imaginative clues to Wells's vision.

On another level, Wells says that comparative anatomists, later working on Martian specimens, called the tentacles 'hands'.

In this way, Wells was making his point about evolution - the Martians have become mere brains with huge eyes and extraordinarily complex tool-users (hence the 16 hands). The trajectory – thought, tool-building, looking.

The whole thing about sight is really weird - almost scopophilia, in a fetishist kind of way (for you Freudians out there).

[Lensman]

Xav:

Good points about the weight of the Martians! They were described as "bear-like"; I had forgotten they were so large.

Those arguing against Xav: He's right. The novel clearly describes the tentacles as thin and whip-like. *Not* like octopus tentacles, which are quite thick, as are elephants' trunks.

If they were thick, this would indicate that, like octopus tentacles, they were relatively strong. The fact they were thin means they were weak, unless you're postulating the Martians' muscles were substantially more efficient than ours. Frankly I think it's a stretch to believe that the massive Martians could even drag themselves along on the ground under Earth gravity, but if we suppose the invaders were bred to be stronger than the average Martian, or at least selected for strength, then perhaps it's defensible.

Bayne said:

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!

True. Keep in mind, tho, that all the early creatures were water dwelling. Colonizing the land came much later, and was first done by insects.

Bayne said:

On a small scale don't caterpillas use the same sort of muscles?

Ahhhh! Good point there, Bayne. Okay, I must retract my absolute statement that "no land creature has tentacles for legs". However, note the caterpillar does not use those front four legs to support any substantial portion of its weight most of the time. For most caterpillars, it's the body, or the rear "false legs" that mainly support its weight. (The inchworm obviously uses its front legs to support half its weight during normal movement. However, it's very small even for a caterpillar-- so it has the cube/square law working in its favor-- and IIRC its front legs are much shorter in proportion to the body size than other caterpillars.) Keep in mind, too, that an insect has a very low weight/strength ratio. Scale up that critter to something the size of a bear, and the cube/sqare law will make it nearly as helpless as a jellyfish.

Bayne said:

When does Wells mention the tentacled Martians having cartillage? I thought that was only in regards to the bipeds.

"...the gnawed gristle of the Martian that the dogs had left..." --II-8.

Bayne said:

In The Crystal Egg I see little in the descriptions that does not tally with the War Martians...

Okay. I admit I haven't really studied "The Crystal Egg" in detail, as I have WotW. It was more the overall impression I got from the story. But it may be reasonable to put that down to two different observers describing the same thing in different ways.

[jeffwaynefan]

[Mr Death Ray]

They have 16 tenticles altogether bunched in groups of 8.

[lanceradvanced]

Ya know, I never noticed the phallic tips to the tentacles on that one before.....

[<[Iron Man]>]

Horsell_Common said:

Wow

That's an awesome picture Horsell, where did you get it from?

[jeffwaynefan]

[jeffwaynefan]

. . . and not forgetting the sketch that HG did himself of what he beleived a Martian looked like

[Bayne]

[glow=red,2,300]That pic is up on Dr Zeus, it was created by a guy from Sony.
[/glow]

[Xav]

And like a lot of pics of all sorts to do with the Martians of Wells, it is totally inaccurate, in my opinion.
If the head is 4 feet across, this thing is swaying around about 15 feet off the ground and its tentacles are about 20 feet long.However, its a nice, creepy pic, one of the best I have seen, and of course we all deserve to see it.

[Bayne]

[glow=red,2,300]Wells doesn't mention the length of the tentacles though does he?

The biggest prob with the pic I think is the tentacle count is down.

[/glow]

[Lensman]

Bayne said:

Wells doesn't mention the length of the tentacles though does he?

As usual, it depends on how one interprets the text:

"...something resembling a little grey snake, about the thickness of a walking stick..." (I-4)

Does "little grey snake" imply a short length? Or not? I think either inerpretation is valid.

[Leatherhead]

The above pic has confused me for quite a while. What Wells has drawn appears to be a martian with a few tenticles with several smaller other tenticles branching form them. IS this what he meant by them being called "hands"? Comments?