The Three Century Franchise
6/11/202658 min
Few science-fiction stories have had a stranger afterlife than The War of the Worlds. H.G. Wells first launched his Martian invasion in the 19th century as a devastating reversal of empire: what if humanity was not the conqueror, but the conquered? What if something colder, smarter, and more technologically advanced looked at us the way powerful nations had looked at the people they considered beneath them?
In this episode of Sound, Light & Frequency, Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman trace how Wells’ nightmare managed to invade three different centuries. In 1938, Orson Welles turned the story into a radio broadcast so convincing it became a modern media legend, moving the Martians from Victorian England to New Jersey and making the invasion feel like breaking news. In 1953, Hollywood reimagined the attack as a Cold War apocalypse in Technicolor, where science, faith, flying machines, and atomic anxiety collided on screen. Then, in 2005, Steven Spielberg brought the invasion into the 21st century, turning it into a story of terrorism, sirens, refugees, broken families, and the terrifying sense that the attack had already begun before anyone understood what was happening.
Bryce and Brent also bring the Mars obsession closer to home, with personal stories about the Red Planet’s hold on their own imaginations — from Bryce covering the first Viking lander as a young radio newsman to later writing and selling a screenplay about a Mars mission, known along the way as The Face. Because in science fiction, Mars is never just a place. It’s a screen we keep projecting ourselves onto.
From imperial guilt to radio panic to nuclear dread to post-9/11 trauma, War of the Worlds has never really been about Martians. It’s been about us — our fears, our arrogance, our vulnerability, and the awful possibility that we may not be at the top of the cosmic food chain after all.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsBryce Zabel· Host0:00
War of the Worlds may be the strangest franchise in science fiction because it managed to invade in three different centuries. It began in the 19th century when H.G. Wells looked at Imperial Britain. It was confident, powerful, certain of its place in the universe, and he asked a devastating question: What if we were not the conquerors but the natives? What if something colder and smarter and more technologically advanced looked at us the way we look at animals or insects or amoebas or just people we thought are beneath us? That was the terror of that first book. It wasn't just Martians, it was potential humiliation. And then, in the 20th century, Orson Wells took that Victorian nightmare and turned it into a modern media event. Suddenly, the Martians weren't landing in England, they were landing in New Jersey, though they were doing it through your radio speaker and in the middle of what sounded like breaking news. And after that came the 1953 film where Wells' invasion became the Cold War apocalypse in Technicolor. And then science, faith, and atomic bombs and flying war machines all collided on screen. And then, in the 21st century, it got its turn with Spielberg talking about 9/11 and terror, broken families, refugees, sirens, and that awful feeling that the attack had already begun before anyone even understood what was happening. Television, at the same time, was stretching this into conspiracy, survival, and identity crisis. And then, not