War of the Worlds
On a Sunday like today, Americans got the bejesus scared out of them on 30 October 1938 when a frenzy of radio news bulletins interrupted the Mercury Theater on Air radio show of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS).
What started as breaking news about an explosion on Mars observed by scientists rapidly deteriorated into a horror-drama starring frazzled, breathless reporters yapping live on air about a flying saucer setting down on a farm in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey.
Then utter chaos; the radio went dead.
Reporting their last, the radio news hounds blurted, shrieked or cried that the Martians had landed. Without any warning such as that received by Jack Nicholson on Mars Attack, the aliens zapped the gawking crowd into dust particles with ray guns.
The world was stunned, at least for the Americans who thought and still think they are at the center, if not, THE CENTER of the world.
US newspaper accounts reported at least a million Americans jumping into their cars to flee the scene of the carnage and pandemonium as reported on CBS. At the time, radio was king and television was still in its infancy.
Orson Welles earned fame or infamy for that CBS show that mixed faux news reports with regular canned music programming about an alien invasion that never happened.
It was today’s equivalent of fake news; in fact, a real-life radio drama that one of 12 Americans who heard it thought was true.
An adaptation of an H. G. Wells novel, the radio show prompted Welles to apologize publicly that he and his fellow actors never thought the “invasion” would cause mass panic and hysteria.
The newspapers fanning the flames of radio’s “folly” was fake news fodder, as well, apparently motivated by a desire to discredit radio as a source of news.
Investigations would show the panic was overblown as Welles’ drama had few listeners, ranged in the same timeslot as it was with the popular Chase and Sanborn Hour comedy show of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen.
Who needed drama when one could die crying and rolling on the floor laughing with comedy?
The War of the World (WoW), version 1.0, was print versus broadcast. WoW 2.0 is happening now — digital versus print and broadcast combined.
The winner of WoW 2021 will have to seamlessly morph all media platforms into one, while beating the tech giants in their game of cornering all of the profits.
Back on the space front, the real and not the imagined one, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars this week. Ho-hum. Not another Mars landing and not another rover on the Red Planet’s surface.
Been there, done that, and along with NASA, China and the United Arab Emirates have sent missions to Mars, which are happening now.
The earliest Mars rovers years back returned disappointing images of a barren planet, with none of the structures that would suggest any of Wells’ wild imaginings could have been real.
Okay, so those bulbous-headed Martians that swapped Sarah Jessica Parker’s head with her dog’s were not there.
No Martians, no problem.
The current
Mars missions may not involve SETI or the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. Still, at least for NASA, the search for ET
— not the phone-dialing Steven Spielberg types — continues.
Now NASA is probing for microbes on Mars. Not exactly sentient creatures, but creatures nonetheless that could prove Earth is not alone in harboring life. As if we do not have enough microbes back on Gaia, microscopic or otherwise.
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Now NASA is probing for microbes on Mars. Not exactly sentient creatures, but creatures nonetheless that could prove Earth is not alone in harboring life.
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It was today’s equivalent of fake news; in fact, a reallife radio drama that one of 12 Americans who heard it thought was true.