It makes me wonder, that John Christopher´s ideas seem like a prequel to "War of the Worlds", if the aliens had won, but no one seems to care about these similarities, especially H.G. Wells´ heirs.
"Hooters, hooters, yum yum yum,
Hooters, hooters, on a girl that´s dumb!"
The Bundy credo
The only similarity John Christopher's story has with The War of the Worlds is the look of the three-legged alien machines. Apart from that, the stories are completely different. In the books John Christopher's Tripods were never armed with a heat-ray, but in the TV show some of them carried weapons that fired a green laser.
H.G. Wells' heirs don't seem to be too worried about the multitude of books and movies that have time machines in them. Although H.G. Wells wasn't the first person to write about time travel. H.G. Wells was the first person to write about civilization being destroyed with nuclear weapons in his book The World Set Free (1914). Wells actually used the term "atomic bomb". Since then there have been hundreds of science fiction books where civilization gets destroyed with nuclear weapons.
Thank you very much. Very interesting, indeed. But I think, in addition to the tripods looking similiar, the Masters resemble the aliens in the old "War of the Worlds"-movie, especially in the show, I´ve read in the net, they are described different in the books, but also with three legs and eyes.
Very interesing that about "The World Set Free". I had never heard of it before.
"Hooters, hooters, yum yum yum,
Hooters, hooters, on a girl that´s dumb!"
The Bundy credo
Despite the way the narratives are indeed different, I think it's very natural to find The Tripods very reminiscent of Wells' martians. Perhaps it's simply that tripedal war machines are an idea that hasn't been as thoroughly imitated as Wells' many others so Christopher's stick out more... but even so, I can't help but feel Christopher must have had War of the Worlds in mind when he wrote these stories. I haven't actually read 'When The Tripods Came', which I guess would be more like War of the Worlds in the sense of it being about an invasion. Though of course Christopher's aliens are much subtler than Wells' martians, in their methods and objectives, since the Masters are out to colonise and exploit, while the Martians are out to exterminate. Still, they're both intent upon... well, not 'terraforming'... Perhaps 'ares-forming' is a better word... and both seem to be about Imperialist exploitation with slightly different faces.
shareIn reverse though, it is intersting that Spielberg "borrowed" the scene from the White Mountains books where the hero takes out a tripod at close quarters with a hand grenade, and put it in the WOTW remake. I didn't hear John Christopher complaining! (To be fair, Spielberg is a White Mountains fan so it was probably a hommage)
share"When The Tripods Came" described an alien invasion scenario that I believe is more intelligently thought through than the typical Independence Day style "aliens come and blow everyone up" type of invasion. The problem with the that type invasion scenario is that the aliens would be faced with an unbelievable guerilla war, I mean, unless they nuke the whole place first they would be facing six billion people who really want to survive. The scenario in When the Tripods Came was instead more subtle and revolved around the masters brainwashing more and more people which resulted in humans turning on each other and the collapse of our defence forces.
Political correctness and realism are antonyms.