Everything Old Is New Again
This post owes its existence entirely to a suggestion made by Barry, of bmj2k.com.
* * *
The horizon crackled with the light of flame.
Gathered on a hill overlooking Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, a crowd – many with blankets draped over their shoulders to fend off the October chill – were waiting to see if the world might end.
The loudspeakers rigged at the edges of the mob sometimes brought the flat tone of a newsman, and sometimes the sharp bark of military communications.
Across the empty fields, a massive, unearthly, machine strode over the autumn grasses.
Finally, after all others seemed to have uttered their strangled death rattles into their mics, a single voice continued on, chronicling the last moments of the invasion.
The alien tripod stumbled, leaned drunkenly, then collapsed.
Orson Welles, dead a hundred years, gave a cheery warning that the production was meant only as Halloween tomfoolery, and the holographic projectors began to cycle down.
The defeated extraterrestrials shimmered into non-existence.
With the flaming country-side once again dark, the crowd began to disperse.
The War of the Worlds (October 30, 1938)
This has in turn inspired me to tell my own little story of what else may have happeend on that faithful night. It may take me awhile but I think I have an angle.
Excellent! Looking forward to it.
I’m doing it as a newspaper front page. May take awhile but even doing it in Word I think it will come out nicely. It will have a very different tone than the one which you captured so well.