Extraterrestrial Civilizations - Isaac Asimov [27]
Lowell’s views were even more extreme in later books he published—Mars and Its Canals in 1906 and Mars as the Abode of Life in 1908. The general public found the whole thing exciting, for the thought of a nearby planet populated by an intelligence advanced beyond that of human beings was dramatic.
Lowell’s role in making advanced Martian life popular was outpaced, however, by the English science fiction writer, H. G. Wells.
In 1897, Wells published a novel, War of the Worlds, in serial form in a magazine, and the next year it appeared in book form. It combined the view of Mars as presented by Lowell with the situation as it had existed on Earth over the preceding twenty years.
In those decades, the European powers—chiefly Great Britain and France, but including also Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, and Belgium—had been carving up Africa. Each nation established colonies with virtually no regard for the wishes of the people already living there. Since the Africans were dark skinned and had cultures that were not European, the Europeans considered them inferior, primitive, and barbarous, and felt they had no rights to their own territory.
It occurred to Wells that if the Martians were as far advanced scientifically over Europeans as Europeans were over Africans, the Martians might well treat Europeans as Europeans treated Africans. War of the Worlds was the first tale of interplanetary warfare involving Earth.
Until then, tales of visitors to Earth from outer space had pictured those visitors as peaceful observers. In Wells’s novel, however, the outsiders came with weapons. Fleeing a Mars on which they could barely keep alive, they arrived at lush, watery Earth and prepared to take over the planet to make a new home for themselves. Earth people were merely animals to them, creatures whom they could destroy and devour. Nor could human beings defeat the Martians or even seriously interfere with them, any more than the Africans could deal with the European armed forces. Though the Martians were defeated in the end, it was not by human beings, but by Earthly decay bacteria, which the Martians’ bodies were not equipped to resist.
It proved a popular novel and set off a wave of imitations, so that for the next half-century human beings took it for granted that any invasion of extraterrestrial intelligence would lead to the extermination of humanity.
On October 30, 1938, for instance, nearly forty years after War of the Worlds was published, Orson Welles (1915–), only twenty-three years old at the time, produced a radio dramatization of the story. He chose to bring the story up to date, and had the Martians land in New Jersey rather than in Great Britain. He told the events in as realistic a fashion as possible, with authentic-sounding news bulletins, eye-witness reports, and so on.
Anyone who had turned the program on at the start would have been informed that it was fiction, but some weren’t listening closely enough and others turned it on after the start and were transfixed at the events that were apparently taking place—especially those who were near the sites of the reported landings.
A surprising number of people did not pause to question whether it was at all likely that there was an invasion of Martians, or whether there were even Martians at all. They took it for granted that Martians existed and had arrived to conquer Earth and were succeeding. Hundreds got into their automobiles and fled in terror. Like the Moon Hoax of just a century before, it was a remarkable example of how ready people were to accept the notion of extraterrestrial intelligence.
Though Lowell and his theories concerning the Martian canals were successful with the general public, professional astronomers were extremely doubtful. At least the large majority were.
A number insisted that though they