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The appearance of this aircraft in the novel is very vague. The narrator's brother, escaping by sea, glimpses it shortly after the implied destruction of the Channel Fleet. The narrator himself sees the aircraft abandoned on the ground in London, and believes it is experimental, until he reads otherwise in a post-invasion issue of the Daily Mail. It is implied the aircraft was used to dispense the black smoke, but there is no clear confirmation of this in the text. In the original 1897 Pearson's Magazine serialized version, Wells gave more information:
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 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 would have been infinitely greater than it was, though it could not have averted the end, of course, even by a day.
It is not known whether this version is considered canon, having only appeared, as noted, in the original magazine serialization; Wells re-edited portions of the novel before it was first published in 1898 as a hardcover book.
In other adaptations
The appearance of the flying machine has only so far been depicted once in Pendragon Pictures direct-to-videoH.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, where it makes an appearance after the battle with HMSThunder Child, which is later recounted from the perspective of the artilleryman.
The flying machine appeared briefly in the live adaptation of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, though the album itself does not make any reference to the craft. Many more of them appeared in the later New Generation version of the stage show.
The roughly Manta-ray-shaped war machines of George Pal's 1953 film bear no resemblance to the tripods described in Well's novel; they might be an oblique reference to the novel's Martian flying machine. Their design actually derived from a complication of making convincing walking tripods with special effects at the time, so instead were given three "invisible legs" to support and lift them from the ground. In the pilot episode of the War of the Worlds TV series, a sequel to the 1953 film, these same machines are seen but the "legs" are not present and are given more of the look of taking flight, but still possessing the speed and movement of their film counterparts.
The flying machines are also featured in both the computer game and the PlayStation gameJeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds. In the games the flying machines are equipped with one Heat-Ray and light armor, but in turn, are highly maneuverable and extremely fast. A common[citation needed] tactic in the PC game involves the mass production of these units in order to rush an entrenched human sector.
In Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds, the Martians only have a single flying machine with them, and it is described as being shaped like a traditional flying saucer. In the postscript, when the Martians invade Venus, the flying machine is shown to have been unable to handle in the planet's thicker atmosphere and so crashed onto the surface.
In Superman: War of the Worlds, the flying machine is not a separate machine; instead it is actually a part of the tripods, shown during the climax of the story: Superman tries to bring down a fighting machine by pulling its legs, only to discover that the machine's hood has detached itself and is floating in the air; the Martians have had time to adjust to Earth's gravity. He destroys it by throwing another tripod under it, negating its anti-gravity.
Scarlet Traces is a War of the Worlds sequel based on Great Britain having benefited from the Martian technology left behind after their failed invasion. While spider-like machines have dominated the means of land travel, the Martians' flying machines have greatly influenced air travel, with aircraft by 1908 looking much like modern era planes.
Flying machines appear in The Asylum's film War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave, the sequel to H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. The "squid-walkers" are a living race of Tripods controlled by a single entity inside the mothership. They each carry a kind of Heat Ray and need human blood to survive, so they transport living humans to the mothership to drain their blood. Their weapons are powerful enough to destroy buildings as well as humans; one scene shows a fleet of squid-walkers completely destroying London and Paris.
A Martian is an inhabitant of the planet Mars or a human colonist on Mars. Although the search for evidence of life on Mars continues, many science fiction writers have imagined what extraterrestrial life on Mars might be like.
Bizarro is a fictional supervillain character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by writer Otto Binder and artist George Papp as a "mirror image" of Superman and first appeared in Superboy #68 (1958).
The Martian Manhunter is a fictional character and superhero in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Joseph Samachson and designed by artist Joe Certa, the character first appeared in the story "The Manhunter from Mars" in Detective Comics #225. Martian Manhunter is one of the seven original members of the Justice League of America and one of the most powerful beings in the DC Universe.
H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, also known as Invasion and H. G. Wells' The Worlds in War internationally, or simply as War of the Worlds, is a direct-to-DVD science fiction war film produced by The Asylum and directed by David Michael Latt. It is a loose adaptation of the H. G. Wells 1898 novel The War of the Worlds, and a mockbuster of the DreamWorks/Paramount film based on the same source.
HMS Thunder Child is a fictional ironclad torpedo ram of the Royal Navy, destroyed by Martian fighting-machines in H. G. Wells' 1898 novel The War of the Worlds whilst protecting a refugee rescue fleet of civilian vessels.
The fighting machine is one of the fictional machines used by the Martians in H.G. Wells' 1898 classic science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. It is a fast-moving, three-legged walker, reported to be 100 feet tall, with multiple whip-like tentacles used for grasping, and two lethal weapons: the Heat-Ray and a gun-like tube used for discharging canisters of a poisonous chemical black smoke that kills humans and animals. It is the primary machine the Martians use when they invade Earth, along with the handling machine, the flying machine, and the embankment machine.
The Handling machine is one of the fictional machines used by the Martians in H. G. Wells' 1898 science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. It is a crawling device used by the Martians to lift and manipulate other objects. It is one of the four types of heavy machine the Martians bring with them when they invade Earth, along with the fighting machine, the flying machine, and the embankment machine.
The Martians, also known as the Invaders, are the fictional race of extraterrestrials from the H.G. Wells 1898 novel The War of the Worlds. They are the main antagonists of the novel, and their efforts to exterminate the populace of the Earth and claim the planet for themselves drive the plot and present challenges for the novel's human characters. They are notable for their use of extraterrestrial weaponry far in advance of that of mankind at the time of the invasion.
Scarlet Traces is a Steampunk comic series written by Ian Edginton and illustrated by D'Israeli. It was originally published online before being serialised in 2002, in the British anthology Judge Dredd Megazine. A sequel, Scarlet Traces: The Great Game, followed in 2006.
Edison's Conquest of Mars is an 1898 science fiction mashup novel by American astronomer and writer Garrett P. Serviss. It was written as a sequel to Fighters from Mars, an unauthorized and heavily altered version of H. G. Wells's 1897 story The War of the Worlds. It has a place in the history of science fiction for its early employment of themes and motifs that later became staples of the genre.
The Embankment machine is one of the fictional machines used by the Martians in the H. G. Wells' classic 1898 science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. It is an excavator, and is one of the four types of machine the Martians bring with them when they invade Earth, the three others being the fighting machine, the flying machine, and the handling machine.
Superman: War of the Worlds is a DC Comics Elseworlds comic story, published in 1998. Written by Roy Thomas with Michael Lark as the artist. The story is a rough adaptation of the H. G. Wells 1898 novel The War of the Worlds, but is primarily based on the Superman mythology. Wells' story is transported from early 20th century Britain to Metropolis in 1938, where the Martian invasion is met with a Golden Age-style Superman who is not blessed with the full range of powers that he typically has in modern comics.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II is a comic book limited series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, published under the America's Best Comics imprint of DC Comics in the United States and under Vertigo in the United Kingdom. It is a sequel to the original volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and like its previous installment is a pastiche of various characters and events from Victorian literature; though it borrows a great number of characters and elements from various literary works of writers such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ian Fleming, Robert Louis Stevenson and Bram Stoker, it is predominantly a retelling of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.
War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave is a 2008 direct-to-DVD science fiction film directed by and starring C. Thomas Howell. The film was produced and distributed independently by The Asylum.
The War of the Worlds is a 1953 American science fiction film from Paramount Pictures, produced by George Pal, directed by Byron Haskin, and starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson.
War of the Worlds: Goliath is a 2012 Malaysian animated science fiction war film directed by Joe Pearson that was released in 15 November 2012 in Malaysia. The film is voiced by actors Peter Wingfield, Adrian Paul, Tony Eusoff, Elizabeth Gracen, Jim Byrnes, Rob Middleton, Mark Sheppard, Matt Letscher, Adam Baldwin and other voice actors. The film is a loose sequel to H. G. Wells' 1898 novel The War of the Worlds. Its title refers to the human tripod the main characters use in the film.
The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells, first serialised in 1897 by Pearson's Magazine in the UK and by Cosmopolitan magazine in the US. The novel's first appearance in hardcover was in 1898 from publisher William Heinemann of London. Written between 1895 and 1897, it is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between mankind and an extra-terrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of both an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and of his younger brother in London as southern England is invaded by Martians. The novel is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon.
Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds is a vehicular combat third-person shooter video game. It was based primarily on the 1978 concept album Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, but also draws from the original 1898 War of the Worlds novel by H. G. Wells. The game was developed by Pixelogic and released in Europe exclusively for the Sony PlayStation in 1999. The game was never released in North America.
The Massacre of Mankind (2017) is a science fiction novel by British writer Stephen Baxter, an official sequel to H. G. Wells' 1898 classic The War of the Worlds, authorised by the Wells estate. It is set in 1920, 13 years after the events of the original novel, as a second Martian invasion is chronicled by Miss Elphinstone, the ex-sister-in-law of the narrator of War of the Worlds. Baxter also wrote an authorised sequel to Wells' novel The Time Machine, The Time Ships.
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