how many versions are there

[bubbles]

so how many versions of the story are there? and why? I just reread the book the other day and the story line was completely different from the one that i read in grade 8. i understand that a school would not want children exposed to the more harsh parts of the story, but why was the book that i picked up the other day different from the version that is scanned here

www.uta.edu/english/danahay/WW/index.htm

also where could i get a complete copy of the story that wells origionally wrote? it seems that it has been rewritten a few times and stuff just keeps getting changed. and the story is bieng "diluted" because of it

[lanceradvanced]

bubbles said:

so how many versions of the story are there? and why? I just reread the book the other day and the story line was completely different from the one that i read in grade 8. i understand that a school would not want children exposed to the more harsh parts of the story, but why was the book that i picked up the other day different from the version that is scanned here

www.uta.edu/english/danahay/WW/index.htm

also where could i get a complete copy of the story that wells origionally wrote? it seems that it has been rewritten a few times and stuff just keeps getting changed. and the story is bieng "diluted" because of it

Not sure where you could get the Pearson's version, but I've picked up a couple editions, prolly over 40 years worth of publishing and the book hasn't changed in the versions I have... ('62, '72, 01) and it hasn't changed.. perhaps you ran across a children's edition-or the novelization of the TV series. but you can rest assured that the original -novel- seems to have remained unchanged.

[EvilNerfherder]

I'm not sure how much you know about the world of WotW so I'll give you a brief overview.
The story first appeared in Pearson's magazine and was then followed by a revised edition, with a few chapters here and there different, in book form in 1898.
There have been several adaptions of the story... Orson Welles' Radio play of 1938 in which the story was transposed to modern day America; the 1953 movie production which, again was a modern piece with more akin, I think, to the radio play than the novel; Jeff Waynes famous musical album version of which a CGI film adaption is being realised to be released in 1997. Jeff's album was set in it's proper place and only a few characters and situations were slightly changed from the novel; there have also been various other radio and theatre productions and we now have two movie adaptions on the way.
There have also been several books by other authors expanding the original novel.
I heard there was a children's version of the novel published but I haven't seen it so I don't know that much about it.
You can d/l the novel here..
www.gutenberg.org/etext/36
or here
www.online-literature.com/wellshg/warworlds/
and the pearson's version is reprinted, with some of the controversial Goble illustrations, here...
www.angelfire.com/nb/classillus/images/war/worlds.html
As for paper copies, amazon on the net or any good bookshop should be able to seek them out for you.
Apologies if you knew most of that but I hope that helps.

[bubbles]

after reading my first post i dont think i asked the right question.
i am familliar with the story and really famillar with the musical (it still creeps me out)
i was thinking specifically of the description of the flying machine. in the book that i read in school there was a description of a bat shaped flying machine and in the original it is just described as a grey shape.
also there is a scene where the martians dismember someone to see whats inside.
and another where the handling machine is having a close look at a woman and tearing her clothes off (like in the trailer) these are the small but annoying changes that i am talking about.
is there any way to tell which parts of the story are original or added at a later date?

[Topaz]

Odd. I've never seen any of those variations. I've seen some minor changes where some wayward editor thought to correct the few typographic errors in the 'original' manuscript, but no major changes such as you describe.

The Project Gutenberg version mentioned earlier is, as far as I know, accurate in all respects to the original text.

[Topaz]

Yikes! I just became an uber-member!

Geez, I talk a lot. ;D

[McTodd]

In the Pearson's serialisation of 1897 (available today in the Castle Books 'The Collector's Book of Science Fiction by H G Wells' edited by Alan K Russell - it's a photo-facsimile of the serial and although itself out of print it's easily available from online booksellers - try www.bookfinder.com) there are many minor and some major differences from the novelisation.

The major difference is that the serial does not have 'The Man on Putney Hill' - the Narrator does not meet the Artilleryman again after Weybridge. Wells wrote that for the 1898 publication of the novel, during a period when his opinions and thoughts about the world were developing rapidly. The Artilleryman, certainly in terms of his scheme for post-war survival, looks forward to the technocratic 'Samurai' creators of the World State which became such a Wellsian trope. I simply believe that for the Pearson's draft Wells hadn't yet developed that strain of thought, but by the novelisation had started along those lines (don't forget that during this period Wells was unbelievably prolific, often writing more than one book, short story and article simultaneously).

In the serial, the Epilogue has many differences, especially regarding the flying machine. I quote verbatim:

It has often been asked why the Martians did not fly immediately after their arrival. They certainly did use a flying apparatus for several days, but only for brief flights of a score or so of miles, in order to reconnoitre and spread their black powder. The framework found at Kilburn was certainly this flying machine. I never saw this thing flying myself, but my brother, as I have told in its proper place, had just a glimpse of it. It is hard to believe, seeing their other power, that this was their limit in this direction.

Two things must have prevented the immediate resort to aeronautics. In the first place it must have been impossible to pack the necessary wings into the cylinder by which the Martians came, and in the next the problem of flying in our atmosphere was one they could scarcely calculate in detail upon Mars, since it would be almost impossible for them to estimate the density of our lower air, until they reached it. But these are of course merely suggestions. The fact remains, that they did not fly fifty miles from London all through the war. Had they done so, then the destruction they would have caused must have been infinitely greater than it was, though it could not have averted the end, of course, even by a day.

Note that when Wells edited it for the novelisation, the machine was found in the main pit at Primrose Hill, not in Kilburn (which, for non-UK readers, is in west London).

Also, in the serial there is a paragraph in 'What We Saw From the Ruined House' about Martian 'cruelty' in which it is described how they were rarely cruel for fun, merely out of curiosity, illustrated by an horrific description of an eminent physician found in the Martian pit at Wimbledon* tied to a table, still alive, and horribly mutilated, the Martians having vivisected him in order to find out more about human physiology; the Narrator speculates that they had been disturbed before having had a chance to put him out of his misery. Wells' description of this unfortunate victim as an 'eminent physician' cannot be coincidence, as such men would themselves have been vivisectors on a mass scale in their research and medical college teaching.

There is, in the same chapter, a reference to the Martians' heat ray matches, the only evidence of the Martians' sporting instinct, in which they killed many human victims; but the Narrator points out that in no instance was death other than instantaneous and outright, there being no injured survivors dying in agony hours later as many of the victims of humans' pheasant shoots do. Again, we are asked to compare Martian and human behaviour to satirical effect.

Both of these elements failed to make it to the novel.

Other than that, the other changes I have seen were stylistic improvements to the prose, not in any way substantive.

There have, of course, been re-writes and the like (I have an illustrated version, for example, drastically re-written for children).


*Incidentally, the Wimbledon pit is explicitly described as that made by the tenth cylinder, thus dispelling arguments about how many cylinder actually landed; ten shots on Mars were seen, but many people have pointed out that only seven or so landing places are mentioned; that's as maybe, but why can't we assume that Wells simply didn't mention the other three?

[Gnorn]

McTodd, you gott be f*cking kiddin' me? Wow, didn't know of these parts. That part with the mutulated person sounds very disturbing...

-Gnorn

[McTodd]

Gnorn, you'll be dead chuffed to know I've found scans of those pages - they're on the site that carries the whole Cosmopolitan serialisation, which is very similar to the Pearson's (though, again, not exactly the same).

The relevant pages are p.610 and p.79 (the Cosmo magazine page references, and yes, in that order, 610 first followed by 79) and I'll link them here (they're big, around 0.5Mb apiece, as they're image scans, not OCR):

Bottom of p.610:
www.uta.edu/english/danahay/WW/images/XVIII_610.jpg

Beginning of p.79:
www.uta.edu/english/danahay/WW/images/XIX_79.jpg

[Gnorn]

Hey, thanks. Did you read all the scans? If so, did you maybe come across the parts Bubbles was refering to?

-Gnorn

[McTodd]

I confess I haven't actually read those scans to much extent, as I don't like reading great wodges of text onscreen, but Bubbles' link is to the Cosmopolitan scans as well, which I should have made clear in my earlier post, and they are pretty much the same as the Pearson's serial which I do have (albeit the Castle reprint, I'm not made of money!).

The problem is I don't know which version Bubbles has read - the novel is substantially the same now as when Wells produced it in 1898 from the serial, though I think he made some revisions again around 1920, but I believe those to be minor.

So on the whole, the novel is much as it ever has been, but quite different from the Pearson's/Cosmopolitan serialisations.

[maniacs]

Nobody has mentioned the old 'Audisee' sries of audio tapes in the early eighties. They did

journey to the center of the earth and time machine.

As well as some others. They came in a snazzy card box, with very colourful book. Unfortunatly they ended production before I could listen to WOTW. And friend at school had it but infuriatingly he'd lost it!!!

They were great for young teenagers.

[bubbles]

wow! go away for a few hours and this place fills up with tons of info.
to answer a few of your questions
i started reading the cosmo version online a few days ago, and after my eyeballs started to crust over from staring at my monitor for 4 hours i decided that mabye i should just pick up a copy of the book. what i picked up is the fawcet premier edition published in 1968. this one was printed in1986 (paid $1.75 by the way) and it includes the time machine as well.

it was after noticing some small changes that i decided to skim through the cosmo version again.

btw MCtodd the parts about the "sporting" with the heat ray and the description of the derelict flying machine i have never heard before. you are definately the authority when it comes to the war of the worlds.

so where did the description of the flying machine come from in the book that i read in school ?" a great batlike shape swooping around the sky" or something pretty close to that. in the book i have just read it is described as something "flat and broad and very large"

[jeffwaynefan]

Its a shame that most don't know of those sections that McTodd mentions. I am looking at them now, as I have the 1897 'PEARSONS' infront of me.

The guy in the pit who became hours of fun for the Martians is indeed creepy and also after the Martians have been discovered dead, in the 1897 story, the narrator becomes a special constable for a short period, where in the 1898 story he does not.

Nerf, as Jeff was running late with the CGI film (1997) he has decided to release it in 2007 ;D

H_C

[EvilNerfherder]

Oops.. damn my confused, twisted brain and my sausage fingers..
Ahem..
Glad you spotted the deliberate mistake, Horsell.

[McTodd]

No, no, no, thank you, but I'm no authority on WotW, I'm just lucky to have got hold of the Castle books reprint of the serial, which provides such an insight into how the story evolved in 1897-1898.

Bubbles, I've never seen a description of the flying machine as 'bat like', Wells is incredibly vague about it (deliberately, I suspect) and I can't see him at any point committing himself even to something so specific as 'bat like', the cunning old shagger. The 'flat and broad...' etc. of the book, and the '...framework at Kilburn' of the serial are, as far as I know, the only substantive mentions of the flying machine. As I said, I have a version for kids which is completely rewritten, maybe the one you read in 8th grade was another one similar to that for schools? Do you have the details of it, publisher, date etc.?

Horsell, yes, there's the special constable bit too. The Epilogue is radically different between the two versions.

Now Charles is a real authority, he would know if anyone does...

[Gerkinman]

i want to learn more about the martians removing a woman clothing scene ;D

[Stewymartian]

If I remeber rightly there are some slight differences in the chapters covering the narrators imprisonment in the ruined house. In the original serialisation there is a cage of captive people on top of the ruins of the house the narrator is hiding in. He and the curate can hear the captives talking, though not clearly enough to make out what is being said.

I don't know what possessed Wells to make these changes, as these small differences do make the tone of the serialised version much darker and more horrific, which was surely part of the effect he was trying to achieve.

Also I've noticed that in 'dead London' the woman in the doorway with the cut knee is dead in the book version, but not in the original magazine.

[Bayne]

[glow=red,2,300]Looks like some of the ideas I put in my short stories were in the serialised version! I really have to get a paper version to read (too much monitor reading hurts my eyes).
[/glow]

[HTT]

Another thought: Are you sure it was WOTW you read in grade 8? Being in the UK, I'm not sure what age group Grade 8 covers, but it's possible you could have been reading the childrens story "The Tripods" by John Christopher.

In the prequel, the first tripod takes a man into it, and when it is destroyed they find the remains of him, and his head had been dissected - presumably to see how the caps could be applied.

Later on in the series, there is the 'sporting' element of the Sphere Chase, but mainly The Hunt, where prisoners are released for the Tripods to hunt down and kill.

I can't remember a bat-like ship, but the alien ship does arrrive at the end, and I think it was bullet shaped. Either way "Bullet" or "flat & broad" can easily be mis-remembered as Bat" over time.

Regarding the 'stripped woman' - this isn't in either Tripods or WOTW, however it is rumoured that Wells cut it out of the drafts so as not to offend victorian sensibilities. Perhaps Charles can lay this to rest once and for all.

HTT