Orson Welles broadcasts his radio show
of The War of the Worlds in 1938.
The account caused thousands of
listeners to panic.
Photograph: AP
Proof, as has often been pointed out, that aliens don't really exist comes from the fact that so many of the sightings seem to take place in the States, somewhere out in the midwest. You would have thought that our friends in outer space might have wanted to spread the love around a bit on their occasional visits to our part of the solar system.
Why so many visits to the same hicksville countryside residences? Now, of course, the States is a beautiful place full of lovely tourist destinations, but if you were on a flying visit to planet Earth, wouldn't you want to take home a few snaps of, say, the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, or the Great Wall of China? Or maybe aliens just don't go in for boring their friends with slide shows of their holiday photographs.
Despite the fact they don't exist (please don't email with your personal experiences of flying saucers, I'm afraid I simply won't believe it until I am personally having my mind warped by some bug-eyed fiend from the planet Zarg), we are still obsessed with extra terrestrials.
Hence the return of The War of the Worlds to our big screens. Mr Spielberg's instinctive knack for the global zeitgeist told him it was time to look again at the alien-invasion classic. Perhaps it has something to do with the western world's increasing secularism – without God, do we still need some kind of higher being to make sense of our lives (though that wouldn't explain America's obsession)? Or is it global terrorism? With real world threats seemingly beyond our control, maybe we like to think that there is an even bigger, nastier force out there that we really can't do anything about? Back in the seemingly secure 1980s, Spielberg gave us the cute and cuddly ET; now that the world is again a scary place, we seem to need a more substantial threat. The director himself has said that he sees the film as his own commentary on Iraq.
Whatever the reason, it's a topic that has exercised the minds of some fine writers over here on the film pages. First there was Peter Conrad tracing the history of our fascination with outer space. Today we find DJ Taylor looking at the various interpretations that each generation has come up with of HG Wells' classic novel. Meanwhile, Margaret Atwood explains why "aliens have taken the place of angels" and why "science fiction" is different from "speculative fiction".
Whatever you think about life in outer space, War of the Worlds, with Tom Cruise in the leading role, is sure to be a summer hit. So, why not check out the trailer (Real Player) for the forthcoming film, which will be beamed into cinemas across the country from June 29.
