Pages

Sunday 2 June 2013

No one would have believed...

... in the last hours of this evening that the All Quiet on the Martian Front Kickstarter campaign was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than Man's and yet as mortal as his own.


Yet across the gulfs of cyberspace, a mind immeasurably more easily tempted than yours regarded this game with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, I drew my plans to buy it!



 Yep, afraid I couldn't resist this one - I just need to convince lots of relatives that chipping in would make a great Christmas present, especially if the good folk at Alien Dungeon are able to ship in time for their target this December.

As you might have guessed I'm a bit of a fan of the whole War of the Worlds thing - I've read the book countless times, had Jeff Wayne's musical version on heavy rotation in the car, got the Orson Wells radio broadcast on tape(!) and I even quite like the various American movie versions.



I tracked down the "sequel" to H G Wells' original text  Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss, a while back. I say sequel - it was published as a serial six weeks after War Of  the Worlds was serialised and involved an Earth counter attack on Mars, led by Thomas Edison and his marvellous inventions, which included a fleet of space ships and ray guns! Strangely the Martians were giant humans but the story is great fun and must be one of the very first genuine Space Operas.



Lets just hope there's more likelihood of the stuff getting delivered on time than Ogilvy's predictions of anything coming from Mars!


Update - Since pledging last night the total has shot over $260 000 and is headed for $270 000! What's more if $300 000 is reached before the campaign ends in 9 hours then all backers at Invasion level or above get a free resin Downed Tripod model, including an escaping Martian! Sounds like a great objective marker to me, if not a fantastic model for the collection.

Go on - you know you want to


6 comments:

  1. So the sequel is a good read? I've not come across it but I love the "original"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah its pretty good fun, if a little removed from the original. It wasn't endorsed by Wells, although it was by Edison, who features as the main hero of the story and architect of the Invasion of Mars.

      From the (slightly hyperbolic)blurb on the back -

      Whereas Wells had composed a story of human suffering, Serviss invented the Space Techno-Thriller. This book contains the first space battle to ever appear in print. It is the first Alien abduction story. The birthplace of the hand-held phaser-gun. It has asteroid mining and the first truly functional space suits. It is a cornucopia of technical ingenuity.

      Delete
  2. Delighted to see you succumbed! I was all over this like red weed, I'm positively salivating with anticipation of playing this game.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yep me too - I can't quite believe how much free stuff is included!

      The only thing I couldn't quite squeeze in was the Harvester Tripod add-on. Hopefully there'll be a chance later on...

      I'm setting a new blog up to while away the time till December with all things Martian!

      Delete
  3. Personally I favour the Robert Rankin sequels to WotW- Japanese Devil Fish Girl and the Mechanical Messiah... set rather after the events of WotW, the Martians have been eliminated by a number of earth ships dispatched to the red planet with all the incurable wretches from London's hospitals. When the Queen's own Electric Fusiliers (with back-engineered Martian heat rays courtesy of Babbage and Tesla) land a few months later there's only the mopping up to be done!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Might have to look into this - not come across this version before but sounds like fun!

      Delete