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The Martians, also known as the Invaders, are the main antagonists from the H.G. Wells 1898 novel The War of the Worlds . 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.
The Martians are described as octopus-like creatures: the "body" consisting of a disembodied head nearly 4 ft (1.22 m) across, having two eyes; a V-shaped, beak-like mouth; and two branches each of eight 'almost whip-like' tentacles, grouped around the mouth, referred to as the 'hands'. They reproduce asexually, by "budding" off from a parent. Internally, the Martians consist of a brain, lungs, heart, and blood vessels; they have no organs for digestion, and therefore sustain themselves on Earth by mechanically transfusing blood via pipettes from other animals, notably humans. The ear, a single tympanic membrane located on the back of the head, is believed "useless" in Earth's denser atmosphere.
The Martians' arrival on Earth is aboard large, cylindrical spacecraft launched from some kind of immense space gun on Mars. Their chief weapon of war is the Heat-Ray, a directed-energy weapon capable of incinerating any organism it strikes. This is mounted on an articulated arm attached to the front of the tall tripod, called a 'fighting-machine' in Wells' novel, which travels across the landscape destroying humans and their habitat. A secondary weapon, the "black smoke", is a toxic gas released from canisters launched at a distance from bazooka-like tubes, referred to in the novel as a "gun," which kills humans and animals alike; it is rendered harmless by Martian high-pressure steam jets and water. Mention is also made of a Martian aircraft, but it is hardly seen, except to possibly spread the deadly Black Smoke from above over a wider area. A red weed (or red creeper) is left as an indicator of their presence with floral or fungal ties to their home-world.
Evidence of a second race of Martian appear in the dominant race's cylindrical transport vessels, presumably for use as their food supply while in transit; but they are all killed before the Martians reach Earth. These secondary Martians are bipedal, nearly 6 ft (1.83 m) tall, and have "round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets"; however, their fragile physical structure, made up of weak skeletons and muscles, would have been broken by Earth's heavier gravitational pull. It is possible that these creatures are not native Martians, but similar to the Selenites described in Wells's other interplanetary work, The First Men in the Moon .
Based on their physical features, the Martians might be the descendants of a species similar to human beings, that evolution has reduced to only a large brain and head and two groupings of eight tentacles (hands). They are described as sluggish under terrestrial gravity, which is roughly three times stronger than that of Mars. It is reported that several Martians attempt to "stand" on their tentacles, implying that they are capable of locomotion in this manner while in Mars' lighter gravity, but not on Earth.
Communication between the Martians is never made evident, but the narrator, as he sees Martians working together without audible means, concludes that they use telepathy. He makes mention of a "queer hooting" sound, but attributes it to the exhalation of air prior to fatally transfusing blood from their human victims. Some evidence of audible communication is associated with the Martian Fighting-Machine, which are described emitting siren-like "Aloo, aloo" calls, and the repeated "Ulla, ulla" call (similar to a cry of alarm or despair) that echoes throughout London after the mass death from bacterial infection of the Martians.
Despite their advancement, the Martians' technology lacks the wheel, and it is implied they are ignorant of disease and decomposition. It is theorized that their advanced technology eliminated whatever indigenous diseases were present on Mars, and so they no longer remembered their effects. Ultimately, their lack of knowledge or preparation against any bacteria indigenous to Earth, causes their destruction here (though the epilogue states they may have successfully invaded Venus) by what Wells described as "putrefactive bacteria," which digests organic materials upon death.
Most adaptations of H.G. Wells' novel incorporate Martians as the invading race. A few draw upon their description from the original novel such as the infamous radio adaptation, as well as musical version, and Pendragon film adaptations.
Most versions of the Martians differ from Wells' version. Despite a lack of verbal language in the novel (with the exception of the battle cry, "Aloo"), for example, many versions give them one nevertheless.
In one of the first sequels, 1898's unauthorized Edison's Conquest of Mars , a good deal of text is spent describing the Martians. In illustrations and descriptions, they are made to resemble bug-eyed, 15-foot-tall human figures, and have a vocal speech. Around 7500 BC they visited Earth, and constructed the Pyramids of Giza and Great Sphinx of Giza as a memorial to their leader. When a plague forced them to return to Mars, they brought with them a number of humans from the Fertile Crescent (transported to Egypt), whose descendants continued to serve as slaves to the Martians until they were wiped out in the aftermath of the Martian invasion of Earth, due to Martian fears of humans. At the same time as The War of the Worlds, the Martians were said to be involved in a war against the giant inhabitants of Ceres. The Martian leadership is described as:
At the top of the steps on a magnificent golden throne, sat the Emperor himself. There are some busts of Caracalla which I have seen that are almost as ugly as the face of the Martian ruler. He was of gigantic stature, larger than the majority of his subjects, and as near as I could judge must have been between 15 ft (4.57 m) and 16 ft (4.88 m) in height[...]I had also learned from [a Martian slave] that Mars was under a military government, and that the military class had absolute control of the planet. I was somewhat startled, then, in looking at the head and centre of the great military system of Mars, to find in his appearance a striking confirmation of the speculations of our terrestrial phrenologists. His broad, mis-shapen head bulged in those parts where they had placed the so-called organs of combativeness, destructiveness, etc.
Also in Edison's Conquest of Mars, a number of Martians were said to have managed to return to Mars after their compatriots died out, by building another space cylinder and launching it from Bergen County, New Jersey. The blast of the launch is said to be large enough to have destroyed the remains of New York City that the Martians had left alone.
In a crossover with the early Superman mythos, Lex Luthor helps the Martians, although he eventually betrays them. Scarlet Traces reverses this, with a Martian survivor helping the British prepare for a counter-invasion of Mars.
In the Marvel comic book Killraven: Warrior of the Worlds, the Martians return to Earth in the year 2001 in an alternate, post apocalypse version of the Marvel universe. Killraven, alongside other heroes such as Spider-Man fight the Martians and their human slaves.
The Martians would later have a small appearance in 2010's The Avengers volume 4. When Kang's interference of the timestream shatters it, random events of history occur in present-day New York City, including the arrival of Killraven and the Martians, piloting their Tripod walking machines. They are defeated by Thor. [1]
The Martians later appeared in 2015 in All-New Invaders #11-15. The story was collected under the title "The Martians are Coming". [2]
In the 1953 film adaptation, the Martians are short, brown creatures having three-fingered hands with suction cups at the end of long arms and a cyclopean eye divided into three sections: one red, one green, and one blue. The bottom-half of the creature is never fully shown; but blueprints show three legs having each a single suction-cup toe, similar to those on their fingers; other art shows two legs. No description of the alien's internal structure is given; but they are revealed to have blood, and their anemic blood cells are viewed by scientists under a microscope. As in other versions of the story, the Martians succumb to terrestrial bacteria. The aliens appear to have no use for human beings, unlike the original book's Martians who also used them as a blood supply.
In the Asylum film H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds , also known as "Invasion", the Martians resemble a short, green, disc-like head with four long tentacles acting as legs. Their feet have mouths having the ability to spit a deadly, corrosive acid. Inside these mouths are three tongues that closely resemble the Martians' fingers on the 1953 film version. On the DVD's Behind the Scenes feature, actor Jake Busey describes the aliens as looking like "floating pool chairs". It would appear that these Martians also have a need for human blood, and tend to appear mostly at night (possibly because sunlight on Mars is weaker than that on Earth). The cause of their deaths is uncertain, but it is presumably a virus. The main character, George Herbert, injects an alien with a rabies vaccine, with hope that "life fighting life" can stop them when guns and bombs have failed. At the end of the film, the aliens curiously stand paralysed when infected. Survivors confirm that they were infected by an airborne virus. They are not given the name "Martian" in the film, but are only named "aliens" once in the film, and a few times as "demons" by a Pastor. Their machines have six legs and resemble a crab, similar to the 'handling-machine' of the original novel.
In the sequel War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave , the antagonists are the "squid-walkers", a cybernetic race of tripods controlled by a single entity inside their mothership. Inside the mothership, humans are kept alive and their blood is filtered, homogenised, and fed to the aliens. They are killed by infected blood injected into the mothership's core, telepathically shutting down the Tripods.
In the film H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds , the Martians are large, bullish creatures, keeping the two large eyes and tentacles described in the book; but do not seem to possess the beak-like mouth. They meet the same fate as the originals, having caught Earthly diseases. Their fighting-machines are extremely tall, with very long silver legs and numerous appendages, and emit a similar sound to the "Ulla" Wells described. The aliens crash to Earth in cylinders, which more closely resemble a meteorite (a similar aspect was used in the 1953 film adaptation), and spread their red weed during the invasion. They feed on human blood, extracted from the human prisoners via a Handling-machine. For these reasons, a character names them "vampires."
In Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds , in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and Professor Challenger battle the aliens, it is hinted that the Martians may have accelerated their evolution using selective breeding and eugenics, and that their original body type may have resembled the form of the tripods. It is also made clear that the aliens are not Martians, but originate from a more distant planet flooded with water, which puts the long legs of the Tripods into motion.
In Rainbow Mars they also appear as one of the many races from inhabiting Mars; killed not by bacteria but by the higher gravity of Earth, which caused organ ruptures and internal bleeding. They are mentioned as having launched two invasions of Earth, one in the early 20th century and the second in the 1950s (to correspond with the novel and 1953 movie).
In the Wold Newton family, they are mentioned as possibly related to the kaldanes and Cthulhuoids.
The Mars People from the game Metal Slug are inspired by the designs of the Martians.
The novel series known as The Tripods features a race of extraterrestrials invading Earth by means of gigantic, three-legged machines compatible with Wells' description of "a great body of machinery on a tripod stand"; but these are not used as war-machines, and the extraterrestrials commanding them do not use humans as prey.
Not all of the antagonistic invaders are from Mars. Because science has revealed that the red planet is devoid of intelligent life, the concept of using Martians is sometimes dropped from some adaptations as it is no longer deemed realistic.
One of the earliest known to take a new spin on the invaders was in a pilot presentation made by George Pal for an unrealized War of the Worlds TV series. Though Pal's 1953 film is established as a basis for the look of the invaders and their technology (their war machines bearing no clear dissimilarities), there is no seeming intended continuation. These invaders, depicted only in production art, only differ in certain detail as they appear leaner and their cyclopean eye sporting apparently only a single color. The most notable difference is that these aliens are not stated to be Martians. In part of the series' set-up, humanity sends ships to pursue the defeated invaders. Instead of chasing them to Mars, they are tracked down to the distant Alpha Centauri. It is then revealed that these aliens are not even the main villains, but rather an underling race to a greater force that is not revealed in the presentation.
The actual War of the Worlds TV series that was made, a sequel to the 1953 film, goes into more detail with its invaders. When the show begins, there is no mention of Mars (with the exception of one episode in which characters are confusing them with the Martians of the radio broadcast). Though some minor details are given away to indicate that their home planet was not Mars, it is not confirmed on-screen until midway through the season that they originate from a world named Mor-Tax. With their beautiful planet becoming uninhabitable from a dying star, they invade Earth with plans to take it over to preserve the traits that it shares with their old world. Their society is highly collective with the only sense of division in the form of their ternary caste system: a high-ranking and seemingly infallible ruling class (itself divided between the supreme leadership of a Council and their Advocacy to the lower classes), a military force in the middle, and scientists relegated to the bottom. They have the ability to "possess" human bodies through a process of cell-phase matching, which allows them to carry out their guerrilla war with Humanity undetected. They are incredibly intelligent, able to communicate in seconds over light-years of space, create effective booby traps, and even adapt seemingly normal human objects for their own purposes. However, their intelligence lends itself to their one true weakness: their hubris, as it is established that they often claim victory before it is accomplished, do not admit to their mistakes, and with the exception of the Advocacy, those who fail are executed.
Virtually nothing is known about the alien invaders in Steven Spielberg's 2005 film adaptation of War of the Worlds. On the DVD's 'Behind the Scenes' feature, Spielberg says
"The reason the word "Martian" is never said in this film is because my aliens are not from Mars. They [the aliens] probably come from as far away as E.T, but a much darker part of the universe."
Physiologically, these creatures have greenish/grey-colored skin, and are tripodal. Each limb ends with three fingers (resembling those from Byron Haskin's 1953 film version), and they also have two small limbs, also with three fingers, on their chest (similar to a theropod, or to the Xenomorph queen). The biological needs of this race are largely unknown. They somehow "ride lightning" in small transport pods during a storm to reach their buried Tripods. They require human blood; but only as part of their xenoforming project. Throughout the film, their tripods spill blood that is presumably connected to the invaders' needs (indeed, in the script David Koepp refers to it as "lifeblood", though it is described as rose-colored, rather than the film's orange). Their red weed (or creeper) is left behind as residue of their Tripod experiments. In the climactic scene of the film, a downed tripod opens a hatch that belches the liquid before one of the sickly creatures crawls forth. The death of these invaders is evident as they seemingly dehydrate upon their death; but this occurs only in the end, and thus may be a result of their exposure to bacteria. These aliens do have a language, uttered amongst themselves at some point, and there is logographic writing seen on their tripods.
In Sherlock Holmes' War of the Worlds , Professor Challenger theorizes to Sherlock Holmes that the Martians came from another, wetter planet due to their seeming familiarity with the ocean while battling the Thunder Child ; their small lungs (which would have been inadequate in Mars' atmosphere); and the fact that no construction was evident on Mars before the 1894 opposition. Their apparent struggle to move in Earth's gravity is given as a mixture of caution and embellishment in the accounts of Wells, "the known atheist and radical". Challenger further speculates that they came from another solar system in the galaxy.
In the Scarlet Traces comic, it is eventually revealed that the Martians came from a planet that exploded to form the asteroid belt; they then settled on Mars, driving the native species into extinction before launching similar wars against the races of Mercury, Venus, the Moon, and finally Earth. (A similar concept appears in Diane Duane's A Wizard of Mars.)
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II , also has the Martians being as foreign to the existing Martian civilization as they are to Earth, and evacuate the planet to conquer Earth after losing a war against the forces of John Carter and Gullivar Jones. It is said that the material they use to build their machines is secreted by the creatures themselves. By the year 2009, the Martians are believed by a post-Big Brother society to have been fiction.
In "To Mars and Providence" (the H. P. Lovecraft-inspired entry in War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches , written by Don Webb) it is stated that the Martians are an extrasolar race with similarities to both the Elder Things and Great Race of Yith. Edward Guimont argued that the actual Lovecraft drew inspiration for his Cthulhu from Wells' Martians. [3]
In the Killraven comics, the "Martians" are an extrasolar race who used Mars as a staging area.
The octopus-like aliens of the 1978 game Space Invaders were inspired by Wells' Martians, as game designer Tomohiro Nishikado was a fan of the novel. [4]
Wells never gave the Martians a specific name.
One of the earliest names of the race was the Mor-Taxans, from the 1980s TV show. In Larry Niven's Rainbow Mars they are called "Softfingers", and in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II , the native Martians of the Barsoom books refer to them as "molluscs", "mollusc invaders", or "leeches", while Hawley Griffin contemptuously refers to them as "afterbirths".
George Alec Effinger's "Mars: The Home Front" in the shared world anthology War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches , has Edgar Rice Burroughs' inhabitants of Barsoom, Burroughs' vision of Mars, refer to Wells' Martians as "sarmaks", which name has become somewhat popular and appears in the Wold Newton universe and in articles in ERBZine, the official Burroughs fanzine.
In Ian McDonald's short story "The Queen of Night's Aria", a sequel to The War of the Worlds published in the 2013 George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois anthology Old Mars , the Wells Martians are named the Uliri.
Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, has appeared as a setting in works of fiction since at least the mid-1600s. Trends in the planet's portrayal have largely been influenced by advances in planetary science. It became the most popular celestial object in fiction in the late 1800s, when it became clear that there was no life on the Moon. The predominant genre depicting Mars at the time was utopian fiction. Around the same time, the mistaken belief that there are canals on Mars emerged and made its way into fiction, popularized by Percival Lowell's speculations of an ancient civilization having constructed them. The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells's novel about an alien invasion of Earth by sinister Martians, was published in 1897 and went on to have a major influence on the science fiction genre.
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of science fiction in which the Earth's civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; astronomical, such as an impact event; destructive, such as nuclear holocaust or resource depletion; medical, such as a pandemic, whether natural or human-caused; end time, such as the Last Judgment, Second Coming or Ragnarök; or any other scenario in which the outcome is apocalyptic, such as a zombie apocalypse, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics or alien invasion.
Alien invasion or space invasion is a common feature in science fiction stories and films, in which extraterrestrial lifeforms invade Earth to exterminate and supplant human life, enslave it, harvest people for food, steal the planet's resources, or destroy the planet altogether. It can be considered as a science-fiction subgenre of the invasion literature, expanded by H. G. Wells's seminal alien invasion novel The War of the Worlds, and is a type of 'first contact' science fiction.
Killraven is a character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character has been depicted as a freedom fighter in several post-apocalyptic alternate futures. Created by co-plotters Roy Thomas and Neal Adams, scriptwriter Gerry Conway, and penciller Adams, the character first appeared in Amazing Adventures vol. 2, #18. The series featured the first dramatic interracial kiss in American color comic books.
The Ice Warriors are a fictional extraterrestrial race of reptilian humanoids in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. They were originally created by Brian Hayles, first appearing in the 1967 serial The Ice Warriors where they encountered the Second Doctor and his companions Jamie and Victoria. In Doctor Who, the Ice Warriors originated on Mars, which within the series narrative is a dying world. Their early appearances depict the Ice Warriors as attempting to conquer the Earth and escape their planet as early as Earth's Ice Age. A frozen group are discovered by an Earth scientific team, one of whom, Walters, dubs them 'Ice Warriors' in their first appearance. Despite this not being the name of their species, an Ice Lord later refers to his soldiers as Ice Warriors in the 1974 serial The Monster of Peladon. Similarly there is a fleeting reference to themselves as such in The Curse of Peladon. Although originally appearing as villains, subsequent appearances have depicted Ice Warriors that have eschewed violence and even ally themselves with the Doctor. They have also been featured in flashback and cameo appearances, in addition to appearing frequently in spin-off media such as novels and audio releases.
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 2005 Japanese-American direct-to-DVD independent fantasy horror film produced by The Asylum, which premiered on Sci Fi Channel on Tuesday June 28, 2005, and directed by David Michael Latt. It is a loose adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel, and a mockbuster of the DreamWorks/Paramount film based on the same source, in addition to the third film adaptation overall.
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. It has been suggested that Thunder Child was based on HMS Polyphemus, which was the sole torpedo ram to see service with the Royal Navy from 1881 to 1903.
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. In the novel, 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 everything. It is the primary machine the Martians use when they invade Earth, along with the handling machine, the flying machine, and the embankment machine.
Many works of fiction have featured UFOs. In most cases, as the fictional story progresses, the Earth is being invaded by hostile alien forces from outer space, usually from Mars, as depicted in early science fiction, or the people are being destroyed by alien forces, as depicted in the film Independence Day. Some fictional UFO encounters may be based on real UFO reports, such as Night Skies. Night Skies is based on the 1997 Phoenix UFO Incident.
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.
Superman: War of the Worlds is a DC Comics Elseworlds graphic novel, 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-thriller film by The Asylum, which premiered on Syfy on Tuesday March 18, 2008, directed by and starring C. Thomas Howell. The film was produced and distributed independently by The Asylum.
Barsoom is a fictional representation of the planet Mars created by American pulp fiction author Edgar Rice Burroughs. The first Barsoom tale was serialized as Under the Moons of Mars in pulp magazine The All-Story from February to July 1912 and published compiled as a novel as A Princess of Mars in 1917. It features John Carter, a late-19th-century American Confederate veteran who is mysteriously transported from Earth to the dying world of Mars where he meets and romances the beautiful Martian princess Dejah Thoris. Ten sequels followed over the next three decades, further extending his vision of Barsoom and adding other characters.
Ancient astronauts have been addressed frequently in science fiction and horror fiction. Occurrences in the genres include:
The War of the Worlds is a 1953 American science fiction thriller film directed by Byron Haskin, produced by George Pal, and starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. It is the first of several feature film adaptations of H. G. Wells' 1898 novel of the same name. The setting is changed from Victorian era England to 1953 Southern California. Earth is suddenly invaded by Martians, and American scientist Doctor Clayton Forrester searches for any weakness to stop them.
The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells. It was written between 1895 and 1897, and serialised in Pearson's Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US in 1897. The full novel was first published in hardcover in 1898 by William Heinemann. The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between humankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and his younger brother who escapes to Tillingham in Essex as London and southern England is invaded by Martians. It is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon.
The Great Martian War 1913–1917 is a 2013 Canadian/UK made-for-television science fiction docudrama film, produced by Michael Kot, Steve Maher, and Mike Slee, and also directed by Slee. It unfolds in the style of an episode from the History TV Channel.