The Untold Tales of "The War of the Worlds"

I've been watching Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds - The New Generation" DVD - originally bought as a Christmas present for my folks but still unopened 8 months down the line. The Victorian costumes the musicians are wearing are to die for and the updated music is still amazing, but some of the vocal performances are not as strong as the original DVD production.

Like the fact that the terrible Richard Burton head was ditched, and the noticeable steampunking of the stage show. Some of the extra dialogue is pretty risible, however.

Idle Jeff Wayne chit-chat is not why I'm here however. It struck me while I was watching that all the way down the line, "The War of the Worlds" is a story told through the eyes of a single person, the first-person journalist narrator. Later christened "George Herbert" by Wayne - as in Herbert George Wells - we only see what he sees, only interact with what he interacts with. Obviously there is his brother too (as I've stupidly only just remembered) but that is so essentially the same story that in all later versions it is easily converged with the narrator's.

One of Alvim Correa's beautifully atmospheric illustrations for a French War of the Worlds

I was thinking of all the potentially really interesting tales of the Martian invasion that have been left untold. The extended serialisation Wells wrote, if I remember correctly, features some corking extras, like the scientists who was vivisected by the Martians in a rather twisted piece of satire. But there must be others.

There are obvious ones of course, like that of the narrator's wife in Leatherhead - what traumas did she suffer while waiting to be reunited with her husband? Or that of the Artilleryman, what sense of purpose did he lose after the Martians died when he realised his dream of being a working class Lord of the Underworld was over?

But think too of all the people never mentioned in the book...the nameless dead, the anonymous survivors. Who were the people who discovered the dying Martians before the journalist? Who survived being kept as a living blood donor in the invaders' food baskets, and don't say Tom Cruise with his bloody Hang Grenades.

Who met a Martian close up, and attempted face to face communication, or perhaps hand to tentacle fighting. What happened to those who stayed in an East End of London that still remembered the Whitechapel murders? Who got closest to  a Martian cylinder without being razed out of existence by the Heat Ray?

So many stories.

I wonder how many people have tried to create "spin offs"(ugh I hate that word)  from the original novel; I would imagine it's a tricky thing to do because the rights to the Wells estate are complicated. I shall research this.

Research, then perhaps see if I could produce something of my own.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 16.08.14