War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches

by Kevin J. Anderson Narrated by MacLeod Andrews

Overview

“Fun all the way through... carried out with both a respect for Wells's great work and a sense of humor about its own purpose.” -Asimov's Science Fiction

“Sometimes slapstick, sometimes thoughtful, the book's delights are really too numerous to describe in detail.” -The Valley Times

The Martian Invasion

Nineteen gut-wrenching reports from the front lines of the War of the Worlds, as logged by Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, H.P. Lovecraft, Winston Churchill, Jules Verne, and many of the other most famous writers of the time.

The most popular and acclaimed science fiction writers of today relive the Martian invasion through the eyes of their famous predecessors.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Martians! Percival Lowell may have been responsible for bringing them to Earth; Teddy Roosevelt evidently bagged one in Cuba; H.P. Lovecraft may have been one; and both Albert Einstein and Emily Dickinson seem to have played a role in defeating them. In this collection of stories that complement H.G. Wells's classic novel, these and other speculations are entertained by such well-known SF writers as Mike Resnick, Walter Jon Williams, Robert Silverberg, Connie Willis, Barbara Hambly, Gregory Benford and David Brin. One entry, Howard Waldrop's "Night of the Cooters," which concerns Martians and Texas Rangers, is a reprint. The 18 originals center on the reactions of various historical personages to the advent of Wells's invaders, including Picasso, Henry James, Winston Churchill, H. Rider Haggard, China's Dowager Empress, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Leo Tolstoy, Jules Verne, Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad. Anderson (Climbing Olympus, 1994) has brought together some solid stories here. But since the overarching plot line apes the Wells, variety and suspense take a back seat. The more successful pieces, then, are those like Waldrop's, or Willis's tale of Emily Dickinson's posthumous heroics, which parody the Wellsian universe. Overall, however, this is a far more literate and imaginative tracing of a Martian invasion than the one offered in Martian Deathtrap, reviewed below. (May)

Library Journal

Leading sf authors Roert Silverberg, Barbara Hambly, Allen Steele, Gergory Benford, Connie Willis, and 14 others imagine H.G. Wells's Martian invasion from points around the world as written by notable 19th-century authors and personages such as Teddy Roosevelt, Picasso, Einstein, Tolstoy, Verne, and Mark Twain. The pieces were all commissioned for this anthology except Howard Waldrop's Night of the Cooters, in which the Martians face the formidable Texas Rangers. A rollicking good compilation, especially Willis's hilarious Emily Dickinson. Highly recommended.

Publishers Weekly - Audio

01/27/2014
In this collection, a host of authors—including Janet Berliner, Mike Resnick, Daniel Marcus, and Robert Silverberg—offer up renditions of H.G. Wells’s classic tale of Martian invasion, as seen by the likes of Albert Einstein, Jules Verne, and Teddy Roosevelt. Narrator Andres delivers a solid performance, representing a wide range of voices and styles as he moves from story to story. However, fans of the novel will likely expect more from this—and any—audio edition of War of the Worlds, given Orson Welles’s famous radio production. This audiobook might have benefited from different narrators performing each story. While Andres is an able reader, he’s not a perfect match for all the pieces in this varied collection. A Titan paperback. (Sept.)

DECEMBER 2013 - AudioFile

Narrator MacLeod Andrews turns in a virtuoso performance of a work that would be a challenge for any narrator. In this compilation, today's top science-fiction authors create missives by 20 famous people who recount their experiences during a Martian invasion. Each of these vignettes features a handful of characters, an approach that results in dozens of different voices, along with a plethora of accents. Andrews animates the personalities with panache, bringing forth the wry humor of Mark Twain, the persnicketiness of an Emily Dickinson scholar, and the horror of a dogfight by Jack London. Every 20 minutes to an hour, Andrews must inhabit a new set of characters, and he rises to the occasion. The Martian invasion may have been terrible, but Andrews's presentation is delightful. D.E.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172388385
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	09/24/2013
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,222,595

Read an Excerpt

No one would have believed, in these first few decades of the Twentieth  Century, how vastly human affairs could have been altered by a terrible  invasion from space.  That terrible onslaught from our planetary neighbors,  our enemies the Martians, has left great scars and wrought great changes upon  this green and blue world we call home.

My own chronicle of the Martian invasion that took place at the turn of our  century is well known and, I suspect, familiar to all readers.  In this  retrospective, however, I have compiled several reports from other notables  whose experiences during the Martian attacks may prove interesting and  enlightening to students of mankind's first interplanetary war.

Because of the great turmoil of the time, some of the dates contradict, as do  some of the events depicted here.  (Messrs. Verne and Picasso have refused to  speak with each other further on account of the discrepancies in their  accounts of the sacking of Paris.)  Due to the literary stature of Mr. Henry  James, I have also included his account of the siege of London, though I question his interpretation of events; his journals are purported to have  been written at the time, but I have no recollection of his keeping any  written record during our excursions.

As it has been through the ages, history lives in the memories of the  survivors, and sometimes those memories contain flaws.  

Nevertheless, these accounts deserve to be published—and let the futuredecide their worth.

Finally, I must thank my good friend, Monsieur Jules Verne, for his  assistance in obtaining several of these manuscripts, as well as providing an  Afterword to this volume. —Herbert George Wells

Videos