THE EARTH UNDER THE MARTIANS
Under Foot…
Book 2 Begins!
After a hiatus with the Narrator’s brother in London, we rejoin the Narrator, Curate in tow. He’s having a great time. Best time ever. No one could be having a better time thank he. Ugh.
We continue to learn more about the Martians. For some strange reason they’re harvesting humans…
Though we’ll have to wait a bit later to learn why. I’m sure it’s not for food! Super sure. Yep.
There’s also a strange redness taking over the land, and those damn cylinders keep crashing from the sky…
I’m sure everything will turn out OK. Eventually. I mean, the Narrator keeps talking like he’s remembering all this stuff, but maybe he’s a brain in a jar hallucinating or something. Also, I’m really impressed with late 19th century non-refridgerated larders. The Narrator is about to spend a lot of time locked up with a mad man and though the rations are going to be tight, he is likely to pull through…see above hallucinating jar brain.
A note on the supplied images, which I’m sure I’m re-iterating because it JUST BOTHERS ME, whilst I continue to adore Alvim Corrêa’s phantasmagoric renditions of the Martians et al, the proportions of the operations just aren’t there. They’re much more accurate in the Spielberg movie, but then you have to deal with the rest of the movie, in particular it’s um. Star.
Which is a pity, because that movie’s Fighting Machines are really quite excellent, red weed and everything along with gushing brackish liquids, though there could have been a touch more green smoke. The sound design is really excellent, too, the use of a manipulated didgeridoo is really quite inspired.
But that movie’s Fighting Machines don’t emerge from a Cylinder. There’s a lot of lightning and some talk about the machines already being there and it just makes no damn sense1, but whatever. The Cylinder’s are big. Ninety feet wide and at least two hundred feet tall. That’s shorter but much wider than SpaceX’s Starship, though every bit, perhaps, as ominous. It would be lovely one day to see that kind of crash landing spectacle on the big screen, but that’s just me. Something as big as Cylinder crashing into earth is just going to wreck a neighborhood, let alone a house. BUT WHATEVER, GEORGE.
In minor good news as relates to these releases, if one consults the Great Goog concerning “War of the Worlds Spotify”, we’re now the sixth entry on the search page! Amazing! lol. Go niche or go home2.
And Happy New Moon3, to all who celebrate, and Flapjack is celebrating by updating the ol’ intro theme with a bit of a makeover, with help courtesy of the mysterious Roadside Picnic The Pilman Radiant4. Sample below:
That’s not too shabby, I must say, and part of why I love this stuff as a vocation.
I mean, if you’re going to beam you Martians over, you can beam your fighting machines over as well. Or beam some nano-tech over and have the machines construct themselves from raw materials. Or any host of fairly common science fiction tropes. OR SHOOT SOME FUCKING CYLINDERS FROM MARS TO EARTH AND HAVE THE BALLS TO HAVE THEM CRASH IN NEW YORK. I get it, the movie was release at a sensitive time, but still. It seemed to work out for Independence Day. Remember that movie?
this is entirely due to Spotify’s SEO and not mine, so…shrugs. Don’t fight forces, use them. Get aikido on their ass. Also, did I mention these are being loaded into Spotify? Probably not. Substack made that pretty easy…now if they could just improve their mobile device text interface…>koff-koff<
i know this is going out March 1st and all but i PROMISE it was worked on feb 27-28th….and hey, nice ol big blood moon coming up Mar 14th…keep lookin out!
That name may or may not change depending upon whether or not they ever go public. Stay tuned…
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