Slashdot Mirror
War of the Worlds by the Star Trek Cast
eDavidLu writes "Here is a radio remake of The
War of the Worlds. From the promo: 'Join actors from Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation as they recreate this classic radio thriller. The breathless pace and convincing details make it clear why the 1938 broadcast of an eyewitness report of an invasion from Mars caused a nationwide panic in 1938. Originally performed by Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre of the Air, War of the Worlds is truly the mother of all space invasions, offering a rare combination of chills, thrills and great literature.' My local NPR station KPCC broadcast this show last Saturday night, and the streaming audio for the entire program is available for one week only on their site. I was going to submit this story for Halloween eve, but KPCC was in the middle of a fund drive. Now that the fund drive is over, the slashdotting can begin. If you like this type of programming, remember to contribute to your local NPR station." Update: 11/05 17:53 GMT by Z : Edited for jerks. Thanks, guys. Seriously. Way to be responsible members of the internet community.
It is from 1994.
The movie version is completely Hollywoodized. While it may be easy to say the "War of the Worlds movie is bad, so everything War of the Worlds is horrible", remember that often excellent stories are chopped up, minced and gutted when they are ran through the movie industry. If you wanted to get a taste of the original version, check out the original broadcast here.
I thought it quite a considerate move considering that by definition, a slashdotting means bye bye website for at least a few hours. How is that going to help people trying to make donations?
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternati ve.htm
Works fine with windows media player 6.4.
http://www.mercurytheatre.info/
And mplayer doesn't work for you? Works fine for me out of the box (figuratively speaking of course) and I can use -dumpstream to keep a local copy of the files.
If you want to download the stream, convert to mp3, and then play on your iPod/iTunes/whatever, check out this link. And Mac OS X users should look at this.
Oh - and the original 1938 broadcast can be found here.
That file downloads some 20051029.smil, which has the file rtsp://archivemedia.publicradio.org/5559/kpcc/news /shows/latw/2005/10/20051029_latw.rm in it. This one can be fed to mplayer.
You're quite correct. I recall reading in an article republished in the NZ Herald, the first version of work as H.G. Wells originally wrote it, the martians *won*. Humanity was destroyed - everyone, irrespective of your socio-econonmic class.
It was only after his publisher balked at this that H.G. Wells changed the plot so that humanity survived. However, note that humanity didn't save itself.
It was the cutting edge of science when the book was first published in 1898 (the discovery of viruses and the common cold being relatively new).
It's public domain now and you can read the original book here, along with HG Wells complete works (which I highly recommend - he's the grandaddy of science fiction).
Some slimeball has hacked the LA theater Works website and put a picture of Mr Goatse on it. Well done idiots. *slow hand clap*
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
$ HEAD http://latw.org/audio/detail.aspx?title=War%20Of%2 0The%20Worlds:%20Invasion%20From%20Mars
200 OK
Cache-Control: private
Connection: close
Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 14:55:14 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Content-Length: 17505
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Client-Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 14:52:51 GMT
Client-Peer: 66.77.245.167:80
Client-Response-Num: 1
Set-Cookie: ASP.NET_SessionId=wq0hme4534e45b55owp5vmi0; path=/
X-AspNet-Version: 1.1.4322
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
You know, I actually resent that comment. Arts and sciences are two of the areas that America should invest in, even with tax dollars. NPR is not state-sponsored. That's like saying that C-SPAN or the local access channels are state-sponsored. NPR does recieve Federal money, but if you look at the break-down about 1/8 of their budget is covered by Federal funds. I work at a particle physics lab and it's similar. The only difference is that the DoE actually owns the place. A consortium of universities in the Southeast US run the place. It receives money from the government and is "owned" by the government, but is run by private entities. NPR is similar, but NPR isn't owned by the government. It doesn't answer to a specific agency or anything like that. There is no "party representative" per se. I am actually very much for the subsidising of arts and sciences. Art and science are integral components of progress, but their speculative nature makes them unattractive to the private sector. To keep the two areas really functioning, we actually need government. This is the rare exception when I put aside my libertarian views.
Have mercy on my tracker.... Here is a torrent for an .ogg.
I've edited out the hour long performance after it (never liked I Love Lucy anyway), so it's 53 minutes.
Leonard Nimory is good, but Orson Wells is excellent, and overall I like the original much better. Even the scratchiness of the reproductions adds to the realism (AM radio then). I would everyone get the original (linked below) and listen to it instead, or at least get both and decide for yourself.
I'll remove the link when KPCC does.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by