https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds/Book_1/Chapter_1
The War of the Worlds/Book 1/Chapter 1
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
(excerpts) THE EVE OF THE WAR
And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling, and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that generation after generation creeps upon them.
And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?
From 2/16/2020 ( debut "War of the Worlds" USA streaming video-serial Epix MGM+ ) To 4/27/2025 ( ) is 1897 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 1/12/1971 ( premiere USA TV series "All in the Family" ) is 1897 days
IMDb
All in the Family
Meet the Bunkers
Quotes
Archie Bunker: Now wait a minute, Meathead, you said that, not me.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds/Book_1/Chapter_1
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
(excerpts)
A curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going, but the crowd remaining, both on the Chobham and Horsell bridges. One or two adventurous souls, it was afterwards found, went into the darkness and crawled quite near the Martians; but they never returned, for now and again a light-ray, like the beam of a warship's searchlight, swept the common, and the Heat-Ray was ready to follow. Save for such, that big area of common was silent and desolate, and the charred bodies lay about on it all night under the stars, and all the next day. A noise of hammering from the pit was heard by many people.
So you have the state of things on Friday night. In the centre, sticking into the skin of our old planet Earth, like a poisoned dart, was this cylinder. But the poison was scarcely working yet. Around it was a patch of silent common, smouldering in places, and with a few dark, dimly seen objects lying in contorted attitudes here and there. Here and there was a burning bush or tree. Beyond was a fringe of excitement, and farther than that fringe the inflammation had not crept as yet. In the rest of the world the stream of life still flowed as it had flowed for immemorial years. The fever of war that would presently clog vein and artery, deaden nerve and destroy brain, had still to develop.
All night long the Martians were hammering and stirring, sleepless, indefatigable, at work upon the machines they were making ready
- by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 1:44 PM Pacific-timezone USA Wednesday 04/30/2025
