No one would have believed in
the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched
keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his
own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised
and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might
scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of
water. With infinite complacency men
went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance
of their empire over matter. It is
possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of
space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea
of life upon them as impossible or improbable.
It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed
days. At most terrestrial men fancied
there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to
welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet
across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of
the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded
this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against
us. And early in the twentieth century
came the great disillusionment.
- The
War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells, Book One: The Coming of the Martians,
Chapter One: The Eve of War, opening lines
No one would
have believed in the early years of the twenty-first century that our world was
being watched by intelligences greater than our own; that as men busied
themselves about their various concerns, they
observed and studied, the way a man with a microscope might scrutinize the
creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, men went to and
fro about the globe, confident of our empire over this world. Yet across the gulf of space, intellects vast
and cool and unsympathetic regarded our planet with envious eyes and slowly,
and surely, drew their plans against us.
- The War of the Worlds, opening lines of
the 2005 movie directed by Steven Spielberg
Apart from
removing all references to “Mars,” the movie version summarizes nicely what
Wells was trying to do setting up the great conflict between mankind and the
Martians. For what it’s worth I prefer the
original, but anything narrated by Morgan Freeman has the impact equivalent to
at least a dozen Victorian science fiction wordsmiths.
I’d have to give
it some thought, but some well-developed intuition tell me this paragraph
belongs in the Top Ten Greatest Openings of Science Fiction Literature. In fact, listening to the audio CD commuting
in my car to work today, I recalled most of the sentences, not word-by-word,
but phrase-by-phrase, and I probably haven’t heard them since seeing the
Spielberg movie in the theaters a decade ago, nor read the Wells novel more
than twice that ago.
Give me a few
days to fill out the other nine on that Top Ten list
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