In 1938, seventy years ago, listeners panicked thinking the Earth was being invaded by Martians when Orson Welles performed his dramatization of “The War of the Worlds”.

The story is set in the early twentieth century, and begins with the unnamed narrator, a writer of speculative scientific articles, visiting an observatory in Ottershaw on the invitation of a “well-known astronomer” named Ogilvy. There he witnesses an explosion on the surface of the planet Mars, one of a series of such events that arouses much interest in the scientific community. An unspecified time later, a “meteor” is seen landing on Horsell Common, near London. The narrator’s home is close by, and he is among the first to discover the object is a space-going artificial cylinder launched from Mars. The cylinder opens, disgorging the Martians: bulky, tentacled creatures that begin setting up strange machinery in the cylinder’s impact crater. A human deputation moves towards the crater and is incinerated by an invisible ray of heat.

I bet many people were checking their life insurance rates and making sure their policies were up to date too.

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