“Everyone is quick to blame the alien.” – Aeschylus, Greek poet

War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds Plus Blood Guts Zombies

H.G. Well’s alien invasion novel, The War of the Worlds, is well known and beloved. It has been adapted and retold in film, theater, and most infamously radio, but with Eric S. Brown, we get a life breathed into the old story. Brown takes the well plowed ground first tilled by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and the trend of rewriting classic novels that now exist in the public domain, and not only informs the old but makes the new refreshing.

I have long been a fan of science fiction and H.G. Wells. Wells is regarded by many, including myself, to be a father of modern science fiction. Writing primarily in the early part of the 20th century, Wells explored many topics and themes that are now bedrocks of modern sci-fi. Later great writers such as Heinlen, Asimov, Bradbury, and others built on the foundation that is H.G. Wells.

The War of the Worlds was written around 1896 and was one of the first novels to deal with alien invasion, now an old trope. But in the birth of the 20th century, such an idea was bizarre, and, well, alien. These days zombies are all the rage. Once a fringe science fiction genre, pop culture has now given us a zombie movie starring the most mainstream actor there is: Brad Pitt. It is safe to say zombies are now no longer the purview of Night of the Living Dead fans.

That Eric Brown is able to take two very well done science fictional elements and make them feel alive again is a credit to his genius as an original author and as an adaptor of Wells’ masterpiece.

The War of the Worlds, Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies starts exactly as does The War of the Worlds, which is no surprise since the text is Wells’. Brown does not immediately inject himself into the story, but does so gradually, changing only as much of the original narrative as necessary to point the story in the direction he wants it to go. [Author’s note: I checked this personally by sometimes reading the novels in parallel.] Even when the original novel is overwhelmed with the undead, Brown steadfastly retains as much of Wells’ words as he can. This not only lends familiarity, but helps to keep the new material grounded. The entirely new sections still feel very much like Wells wrote them, and an unwary reader might be forgiven for thinking that zombies were a part of the original fiction. In fact, given how distopic and dark most of Wells’ novels are, it is slightly surprising that Wells didn’t write a zombie novel himself. Certainly the idea of the zombie existed, in some fashion, in his day; after all, the mother of science fiction Mary Shelley had already written Frankenstein and Stover’s Dracula was published around the same time as The War of the Worlds.

Brown even, dare I say it, improved on The War of the Worlds (in certain respects). Once they invade, the Martians actually take quite a bit of time to get their invasion up and running. During this time the narrator of the holocaust is fleeing through the English countryside scared and alone. But that gets a little boring after a bit. There are large sections of the original in which nothing really happens. There are scares and close calls, but very little of substance. Most of the action happens in very dense sections far apart. Brown’s addition of the undead fills up that space very adequately. Not only is there a constant real menace for the protagonist to avoid, the zombies also fill up the narrative space between the Martian arrival and the Martian devastation.

There is a twist with the zombies, who at first seem to be very straightforward, but I will save that for each new reader to discover. I will only say, again, that Brown is subtly brilliant in not going in the most obvious direction but actually thinking through why and how zombies would appear in this particular story. I dare say his zombies have more reason for existing than most I have read or seen.

The War of the Worlds always was a commentary on the fragility of life, the arrogance of human superiority and the triumph of the common man, but Brown takes it one step further: it is now a reflection on the old mores of science fiction and how even something done to death can be reanimated to terrifying appeal.

Eric S. Brown can be found on twitter @EricSBrown75 and read more about his ghoulish works on shelfari.com.

 

 

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