War of the Worlds inspired art on show in Buffalo.

A Buffalo arts exhibition has an unusual piece of work on display, a collapsed tower inspired by the Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast. Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center is hosting the installation by Sam Van Aken until June 4th. The tower is a reference to the water tower that legend says was fired upon by panicked residents of Grover's Mill. Believing Martian Tripod war machines were at large, they are said to have mistaken the water tower for a Tripod and opened fire. The tower can still be found at Grover's Mill. Aken's installation also includes a fake radio broadcast playing on a loop, rather neatly referencing the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland, and telling of panic stricken residents of Buffalo fleeing the effects. Buffalo of course is no stranger to this sort of thing, having been rocked before by a fake War of the Worlds radio broadcast. You can read more about the show at the Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center website, and there are some nice pictures to be found at the Art Voice website.

James Cameron in 3D mission to Mars

Avatar director James Cameron is working with Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop a 3D camera for NASA's forthcoming Mars Science Laboratory (known as Curiosity). NASA has planned a 3D camera for the mission but has scrapped it due to budget overruns. Cameron personally petitioned NASA administrator Charles Bolden for the restoration of the camera, arguing that a 3D camera would chime with the public. Bolden agreed and the camera is now back in place for 2011 mission, though it will be a race against time to have it ready in time. The camera could shoot up to 10 frames per second, raising the exciting possibility of seeing our first movies from Mars.

Hawking fears a real life Independence Day. Earth women beware!

Promoting his forthcoming TV series, renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has voiced concerns that we might face an Independence Day style onslaught from aliens out to steal our resources. Sorry Stephen, I think that's about as likely as them coming to steal our women. Have you been watching Independence Day, which was wrong from beginning to end? Any aliens with the technology to travel the stars have no need of going to the bother of invading a populated planet for resources. As has become perfectly clear in recent years, our galaxy, indeed our local solar system, teems with materials that are unclaimed and free to exploit. Much easier to target uninhabited planets or indeed asteroids. The old idea of aliens stealing our water is a classic of the genre, but pretty dumb when you consider how much free water is out there. Don't get me wrong, the idea of alien invasion is a fun one, but we've got very little to worry about on this score, with one exception. If the aliens are like us, there might be purely xenophobic reasons for them to attack!

Here we go again: Aliens invade Jordan.

I'm never really sure if I should feel happy and vindicated when people panic over fake alien invaders, or if I should be worried for our safety and sanity as a species. I've argued for a long time that the world remains worryingly susceptible to fakery akin to the Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast, and lo and behold, here we go again. What's really interesting here is that to my knowledge, it's the first time someone has pulled this kind of hoax in the Middle East, so kudos of a kind to the Al-Ghad newspaper in Jordan, who scored a fabulous own goal by running an April Fools joke on their front page in a county where the concept of an April Fool is little known or appreciated.

I actually thought this story might in itself be an April Fool. It seems absurd to think that a newspaper article could trigger concern so strong that the local mayor Mr Mleihan commented to the Associated Press, "Students didn't go to school, their parents were frightened and I almost evacuated the town's 13,000 residents", but it looks to be the real thing. Apparently, the local security forces even combed the desert looking for the aliens, after the newspaper reported that 3m (10ft) tall creatures had landed in the desert town of Jafr, in eastern Jordan. Looking at the online edition of Al-Ghad newspaper today, the letters page does indeed carry some corroboration of the event.

The problem is of course that it seems very unlikely that many people in Jordan had ever heard of the Orson Welles broadcast, so were ill prepared to process what they were reading. It's easy to mock, but this just proves that there must be plenty of countries out there where this sort of hoax could have serious consequences. Imagine if it had been done on the radio!!

I'd love to see a copy of the April 1st front page, so if anyone out there has the facility to provide a scan, send it over and I'll post it here.

Martian Ghosts: Fake invasion story panics Georgia

The grinning ghost of Orson Welles was haunting the streets of Tbilisi last night, when a Georgian television station caused a panic by broadcasting the news that the Russians had invaded the capital. The Imedi station caused a meltdown in the mobile phone network and people were reported to have fled into the streets when it aired a hoax news story, claiming that Russian tanks were advancing and that president Mikheil Saakashvili had been killed. The station went on the defensive in the aftermath, claiming that they had made it quite clear that the broadcast was a simulation of what might happen should the Russians invade again, but as has happened so often before, it seems not enough people were paying attention to the disclaimers. I've argued in a chapter of my book Waging the War of the Worlds that a new panic similar to the 1938 Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio broadcast could happen again, and here's the proof. You can watch some of the broadcast on the BBC website.

Moment a Martian was captured - historic photographs unearthed

I've mentioned the work of Neil Hughes before in this blog, when he unveiled a superb model of a Martian Tripod, but he's not been resting on his laurels, and now comes word of his latest War of the Worlds inspired creation, a captured Martian! I'm a big fan of Neil's work and the obvious love he has for the War of the Worlds, so great to hear that his latest design will be available from Eureka Miniatures soon. Here's a picture of Neil's Martian, and for more info and pictures you can check out his blog.

It came from Mars, lands at Ann Arbor

It came from Mars is a new play staging now at the Performance Network Theatre in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It's described as "An off-the-wall story about a group of radio actors terrified by Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast. Passions ignite and secret identities are revealed when a washed-up director, his diva ex-wife, a wanna-be war hero and a German sound effects wiz think they are about to be annihilated by men from Mars." Sounds like a lot of fun. Full details can be found on the Performance Network Theatre website.

Space Shuttle in Central American scare

Concerned citizens of El Salvador had a scare on Sunday, when the returning Space Shuttle made an unexpected detour over their country. Avoiding bad weather, the shuttle caused a sonic boom over the country, sending people into the streets and setting dogs barking. According to Information Week, "Endeavour's sonic boom over El Salvador caused a stir not unlike what occurred in the wake of Orson Welles' infamous War Of The Worlds radio broadcast." Well, not quite the same, as calm was quickly restored, but apparently the story was headline news in the region the next day.

Mars- The Movie - trailer worth checking out

This looks pretty interesting. To quote from the blurb "MARS is a uniquely animated romantic comedy about astronauts and robots falling in love on their way to the red planet. Told in the playful style of a graphic novel, MARS is equal parts character driven story, homage to our galactic neighbor, and exploration of why we explore." The trailer is certainly very odd but strangely compelling. The style is very much influenced, or so it seems to me, by the director Richard Linklater, who pioneered this sort of rotoscoped animation. Definitely well worth a look.

MARS - The Movie [HD Trailer] from Geoff Marslett on Vimeo.

War of the Worlds mock documentary on the way

Back in 2005, Steven Spielberg turned his attention to a big budget remake of The War of the Worlds. At the same time, another director was aiming to produce a version of the story, set not in modern times (as Spielberg elected) but in its original Victorian setting. Hopes were high, but the end result was rightly considered a critical disaster. Now an interesting story has cropped up on the Mukilteo Beacon website, which reveals the full story behind director Timothy Hines' attempt to film The War of the Worlds and the fascinating news that he is putting together a new film, which will weave in some of the original footage he shot into a documentary style format. This could actually work. No one can deny that Hines wanted to make a great movie, but circumstances and limited resources conspired against him. I for one am more than willing to give him another chance and hope this intriguing project goes well.

The great trek is over: Spirit officially mired.

Sad news indeed. After an extraordinary 6-year mission, the Spirit rover on Mars has been officially re-designated by NASA as a Stationary Research Platform. This decision follows months of effort by engineers to find a way of freeing the rover from a sand trap that had left its wheels spinning. But the science is not over for Spirit and it will continue to gather data, confounding estimates that on landing on Mars, it would only last 3 months. Over 6 years later and it is still functioning, plus of course its sister probe Opportunity is still operating after a similar period of activity.

Beware aliens warns top scientist

Simon Conway Morris, professor of evolutionary paleobilogy at Cambridge University will tell a Royal Society lecture today that we should be wary of any encounters with aliens. Morris contends that any evolutionary process likely to create intelligent life will bring about beings with all the same negative attributes as humans. While they might come in peace, they are just as likely to be searching for living space, fuel or water. Personally, I think he might well be right in principle, but I feel there is one serious flaw in this kind of argument. While aliens could indeed be rather nasty, invading an inhabited planet would be a huge undertaking. Just look at the mess we made of Iraq. Subjugating an entire would be infinitely more difficult, and it's just not worth the bother. Water and fuel can be found in vast amounts on uninhabited worlds, free for the taking, and any species able to cross interstellar space with an invasion fleet of sufficient size to occupy the earth could just as easily spend their money on terraforming projects or space colonies. I think John Carpenter came up with a more plausible scenario in his film They Live, in which the aliens are revealed to be capitalist exploiters, stripping the world of it's wealth by stealth.

Killraven returning in Marvel Zombies 5

Zombies seem to be flavour of the moment right now, so hardly surprising to find The War of the Worlds getting an undead makeover from Marvel Comics. I must confess I've never seen an issue of Marvel Zombies or even have a very clear idea of what it's all about, but issue 5 due out soon apparently returns to the world of Killraven, the resistance fighter created in the 1970's who battles a 2nd Martian invasion of Earth. Writer Fred Van Lente has been talking up the series at the Marvel website: "We've got zombies in the Old West, we've got zombies in Killraven's War of the Worlds, we've got zombies in Camelot," he exclaims. "I like the storytelling challenge of taking a straight-forward genre and twisting it into pretzels. It's also fun to come up with new ways to eviscerate zombies."

John Carter of Mars begins shooting

There's no specific information on precisely what they are shooting, but an official press release from Disney has announced that Pixar's John Carter of Mars movie has begun principal photography in London. I have high hopes for this movie given the involvement in Pixar, though this is a major departure for the studio, marking it's first foray into live action. Can the Pixar magic transfer from animation to live action? Hopefully in a few months we'll start to see some images emerge and start to make that judgement, but there's certainly plenty of talent behind and in front of the lens. In related news, Spy Kids' Daryl Sabara and There Will Be Blood's Ciaran Hinds have joined the cast, with Sabara playing Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Monkey on Mars - Will apes rule humans?

You almost couldn't make this up - perhaps it has been made up - but a number of sites around the web are reporting Russian plans to send a Monkey to Mars. What makes the whole thing assume a distinct air of lunacy is reports that they plan to send a robot with the monkey to look after it. What doesn't seem to have been explained is if the monkey will receive a return ticket. And no matter how good the robot, this is bound to cause a huge stink, not only in the capsule but with animal rights groups. For me, it does seem unnecessarily cruel. It's also been reported recently that any number of people are willing to go to Mars, even if it is a one-way trip. Much better surely to send human beings who have made the intellectual decision to go on a suicide mission rather than some poor animal. The AFP seems to have the best info on this story. Of course the big worry is that the Monkey and the robot might one day return at the head of a Monkey/Robot death armada and enslave us all!

Gene Barry has passed away

Sad news to report. Gene Barry, star of the 1953 movie version of The War of the Worlds has passed away at the age of 90. Barry was most famous for his television work, including Bat Masterson and Burke's Law, but of course for me he will forever be associated with the spectacular George Pal movie, in which he played the lead role of Dr. Clayton Forrester. The movie was arguably the best of the many science fiction movies made in the 1950s, boasting incredible special effects and an above average script in a genre that struggled for respectability. Most people probably consider it a B movie, but for me, it will always score an A. Rest in peace Mr Barry.

Princess of Mars on the cheap

Wow, I love The Asylum, a company that specializes in jumping on the marketing coattails of bigger and more cash rich studios. A few years ago they produced a cheapo version of The War of the Worlds, which capitalized on the Tom Cruise movie, and now they're at it again, though you have to wonder if they've jumped the gun a bit with their version of A Princess of Mars, as the Disney/Pixar version has barely left the starting blocks. The trailer for the Asylum version (the story is in the public domain, so not much Disney can do) is out now, and begrudgingly, doesn't look entirely terrible, even if the star looks like he was hewn from a block of wood and the titular princess (there's a pun in there somewhere) is the infamous Tracie Lords. A couple of fleeting effects shots look halfway decent, and while the terrain hardly looks like anyone’s idea of Mars, this could (I firmly emphasize "could") be a fun beer and pretzels movie. You certainly can't knock The Asylum for their cheek - and I particular like that they’re aiming to steal not only Pixar’s moxy, but are name-checking James Cameron in their publicity. The trailer makes great capital of the fact that James Cameron has apparently mentioned in passing that Burroughs John Carter of Mars stories were an inspiration for his forthcoming 3D extravaganza Avatar. Anyway, you be the judge, here's the trailer.



And here's a fasinating earlier attempt from legendary animator Robert "Bob" Clampett.

Montevideo invaded. Watch the carnage.

I love this. Not sure who put it together or even why, but this is a fantastic modern take on an alien invasion. Giant robots start stomping toward Montevideo and without preamble start trashing the city. For something that has no link that I can discern to a big budget studio, it really is an astounding piece of work. The fact that it's called "panic attack" does make me wonder if someone is thinking Orson Welles with this.

Europe and America sign up for Mars

Great to see that NASA and the ESA have finally inked a deal to work together on a Mars exploration program. The deal will ensure a steady fleet of probes to the red planet, beginning with a European-led orbiter in 2016, with surface rovers to follow in 2018. A network of landers has also been proposed for 2020. The ultimate goal will be to bring a sample back to Earth. I just wonder why we can't bring in some more partners? The Japanese and Chinese are building their space programs up, and so surely there would be much to be gained by creating a worldwide Mars program? More detail on the ESA/NASA deal at the BBC.

Movie The Fourth Kind inspired by Welles broadcast?

A new movie about the phenomena of alien abduction is drawing some comparisons with The War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938, though by the sounds of things it has much more in common with The Blair Witch Project. Of course it's a little known fact that the Blair Witch Project was itself influenced by Welles' War of the Worlds scare, so the lineage is there, if a little far removed. Anyway, the movie purports to be a true story about alien abductions that have taken place in Nome, Alaska. A psychiatrist played by Milla Jovovich begins to find a pattern in the repressed memories of her patients and supposed "real" archive footage adds to the terror. Check out the trailer below.