January 05, 2006

War of the Worlds II - Edison's Conquest of Mars
posted by dng 18 years ago
  • Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?
  • I honestly never heard of this. Wow.
  • Great find, ))) to ye, dng!
  • from here, regarding Villiers de l'Isle Adam's L'Eve futur (1886): Villiers, like most European poets, had formed a mighty ideal of America and the Americans. He believed this country and its institutions to be what Thomas Paine, Jefferson, and a few other genuine patriots hoped it would be. He entertained for Thomas Edison the deepest admiration. His novel, a grotesque book, The Eve of the Future, contains a fanciful account of Menlo Park and its "terrifying proprietor." When Edison went to the Paris exhibition in 1889 he became acquainted with Villiers's novel. He read it at a sitting and expressed himself thus: "That man is greater than I. I can only invent. He creates." He did not meet the author, who was mortally ill, though an attempt was made to bring the Frenchman and American together. The leading motive of The Eve of the Future, pushed to an ingenuity bordering on insanity, is the construction of an artificial woman which when wound up imitates in every respect the daily life of a cultivated lady!
  • Excellent. Cheers, Wolof
  • Motif.
  • Fantastic post. Excellent as usual, dingles.
  • Sounds like an early version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
  • Electric bananas!
  • ))) I, too, sing the banana electric. Just..... whoa, dude. Also, Edison hate future. (possibly NSFW, swearwords)
  • The cover of the reprinted version is probably NSFW too . . well, it's definitely not suitable for framing, anyway.
  • This book contains the first space battle to ever appear in print. It is the first alien abduction story. The birthplace of the hand-held phaser-gun. It has asteroid mining and the first truly functional spacesuits. )))
  • DNG, you deserve the Noble Order of the Bronzed Banana (NOBB) for bringing this to the monkeys' attention. It's MonkeyFilterific!
  • Best Post of 2006!
  • this reminds me of the script i'm working on for Titanic II: EXT: North Atlantic, Night. All is still and calm. Suddenly, a gigantic ocean liner erupts from the surface of the sea... Passengers: (bobbing to surface like corks) GASP!
  • . . . AND??!
  • It's like the opposite of The Poseidon Adventure.