Orson's War

One of my writing students wrote a story about a time when he was a boy (in 1938) and a panicked neighbor knocked on his family's door announcing that something bad was happening, that they needed to turn (the radio) from NBC to CBS. They all stood there shocked as what they thought was a news broadcast told of an alien invasion from Mars. Well, you've probably already heard this story, and I had too, but there's something truly gripping about a first hand account of a solid 20 minutes of peering out a living room window with sheer dread while hearing news of Martians walking around the USA and while one's mother, with shaking hands, tries to preoccupy with piano lessons. It's also amazing how few years have really passed since then but quite enough that we would never mistake that kind of theater for news today.  This student, however, was an intelligent, upstanding future Naval midshipman. It just so happens that in 1938 we knew virtually nothing about Mars...except for one scientist who had recently brought the Martian canals into focus on his state-of-the-art telescope, which totally got the imaginations going. Between this and other feared (German) invasions, the stage was set.

I had to take a listen to the original radio show. The "this is only theater" part at the very beginning was easy to miss. (And 90% of radio listeners tuned into the comedy show on the other channel at the beginning of the hour anyhow.) If you have a little time I highly suggest this awesome piece of theatre. If you can imagine the context (1938) and listen as an eleven-year-old boy (or girl), you'll see that's it's pretty incredible. I actually found the first fifteen minutes to be the scariest (very left to your own imagination) though most people in 1938 didn't tune in until after this point. Here's the first 7:40. You can find the rest right here on youtube or on Internet Archives. (This one includes a 2 min intro by Orson Wells from a re-broadcast.)