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)