Historical context for All Quiet on the Martian Front
Jan 17, 2016 18:04:49 GMT
David N.Tanner 07011959 and madmorgan like this
Post by boxholder on Jan 17, 2016 18:04:49 GMT
I found this very informative posting on Boardgamegeek and thought it should be preserved by cross-posting in here. A gentleman named Bill Andel did an excellent research job on the planetary dynamics of closest approaches that could set the time of HG Well's book. By extension, the time of AQotMF falls neatly into alignment. With his permission, here goes:
Establishing an Allohistorical Chronology Part I
By Bill Andel
The setting of Alien Dungeon's All Quiet On The Martian Front (AQOTMF) is based on the tantalizing counter-factuals that the ultimately failed Martian invasion written of in H. G. Wells The War of the Worlds (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36.txt.utf-8) actually happened and was followed up by a much larger invasion a decade later which establishes strong footholds in the Southern hemisphere, Siberia and the Great Plains of the United States, with the latter being contained by fierce resistance on the part of American forces.
In order to increase the verisimilitude of this exciting setting, I propose establishing an allohistorical chronology of the events which transpired in the world following the initial counter-factual, i.e. the initial invasion of England by Mars. In order to do this however, one must first place that invasion in time and determine its scope. Why is this important? Because it is the jumping off point where our own history and that of the setting of AQOTMF. If, as stated in Alien Dungeon's current background material, the first invasion occurred in 1898 (the year Well's novel was published), would a devastated England be capable of waging the protracted and bitter Boer War which commenced the following year? If the invasion was global, rather than confined to England, and assuming the United States were equally affected, would they have been capable of acquiring and completing construction of the Panama Canal? In order to build a detailed and credible background for the setting, it becomes necessary to understand the ripples set in motion by the dropping of the counter-factual rock into the historical pond.
Why not simply accept the proposed dating in the current background material? The difficulty with this is that it lacks plausibility. The primary reason for this is orbital mechanics and their mention in the source materials:
H.G. Wells wrote:
As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as flaming gases rushed out of a gun."
The most significant part of the passage cited is the first clause is "As Mars approached opposition." Opposition is an astronomical term for a celestial object appearing directly opposite from the sun by an observer on Earth. Assuming, for a moment, that, planetary orbits are circular and co-planar (they are neither, but it makes for a simpler example), this would be the point at which Mars would be closest to Earth. The Earth's mean orbital distance is approximately 93 million miles and Mars' approximately 142 million miles, meaning that when in opposition Mars would be about 49 million miles away (it actually can get much closer, as we will see). The period between oppositions, or "synodic period", is two years and 49 days. So, with our circular model, at a year and 24.5 days from opposition, or thereabouts (which assumes the simplification constant orbital velocity, also not really the case), Mars would be opposite the sun from the Earth and be 235 million miles away. This is nearly five times the distance at opposition.
Wells' Martians were technological geniuses that - if not foiled by terrestrial microorganisms completely beyond their ken - may very well have succeeded in the overthrow and enslavement of humanity's domination of our home world. They would not have overlooked simple orbital mechanics and launched their invasion at any other time than "as Mars approached opposition". Incidentally, the choice of verbs - "approached" - is also significant. The Martians would have "led" the Earth in their launches the way a duck hunter leads a duck, so that their cylinders intercepted the Earth at the point of closest approach, rather than inefficiently pursuing the Earth after the fact.
Now, the fact is that planetary orbits are neither circular nor co-planar and orbital velocities vary from point to point along a planet's orbit due to the gravitational influence of other planetary bodies. The results of this are two-fold: first, the distance at point of closest approach (CA) of Mars and Earth to one another will vary from opposition to opposition by more than +/-10 million miles from our circular simplification, above; second, the time of closest approach may vary from the time of opposition by as much as +/-8.5 days. The former is far more significant, as it offers the Martians the possibility of reducing the distance traveled to invade the Earth by a further 20 million miles.
Now, with the astronomical context firmly established, when were the oppositions of Mars around the turn of the century?
Date Closest Approach (MMi)
---- --------
27 May 1890 54.0
03 Aug 1892 35.0 *
20 Oct 1984 40.0 *
10 Dec 1896 52.0
18 Jan 1899 60.0
22 Feb 1901 63.0
29 Mar 1903 59.5
08 May 1905 50.5
06 Jul 1907 38.2 *
24 Sep 1909 36.4 *
25 Nov 1911 48.1
05 Jan 1914 58.1
I have indicated the most favorable closest approach distances with an asterisk. (Popular Science News, Vol. 35 - available for preview from Google Books for oppositions before 1900, www.uapress.arizona.edu/onlinebks/MARS/APPENDS.HTM for oppositions after 1900).
Does Wells offer clues to indicate when the invasion occurred? Indeed he does, many of which are cited in an interesting article, "Dating The War of the Worlds" (http://www.freewebs.com/wotwfaq/dating.htm). The article claims much of the information Wells provides is contradictory, but this seems to be the case only in attempting to reconciling those passages with the author's contention of a 1901 invasion.
Most of the relevant passages to consider are primarily in Chapter 1 of Book I:
H.G. Wells wrote:
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...
...and...
H.G. Wells wrote:
Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century.
Thus, we know the Martians were preparing for their invasion prior to the turn of the century.
H.G. Wells wrote:
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.
This implies 1901 as the earliest possible invasion date.
H.G. Wells wrote:
During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the illuminated part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory, then by Perrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard of it first in the issue of Nature dated August 2. I am inclined to think that this blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun, in the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us.
In fact, this was Wells' touchstone, as the journal Nature did in fact report on a phenomenon of incandescence observed on Mars by Perrotin and Lavelle of the Nice observatory during the 1894 opposition, though this has been satisfactorily explained in modern times (http://www.alpo-astronomy.org/mars/articles/MartianFlaresALP...).
H.G. Wells wrote:
Peculiar markings, as yet unexplained, were seen near the site of that outbreak during the next two oppositions.
This would refer to the oppositions of 1896 and 1899, respectively.
H.G. Wells wrote:
The storm burst upon us six years ago now.
This indicates that the narrator is penning his memoir six years after the invasion took place.
H.G. Wells wrote:
As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as flaming gases rushed out of a gun."
So far Wells text seems to indicate that invasion took place at leas two oppositions after that of 1894, thus 1899 at the earliest. But this doe snot jibe with his "early in the twentieth century" comment, above, which would tend to indicate the invasion occurred no earlier than the 1901 opposition.
H.G. Wells wrote:
As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye was tired. Forty millions of miles it was from us--more than forty millions of miles of void.
This passage tends to contra-indicate oppositions in which the point of closest approach is less than 40 million miles, nor those much greater than 40 million Miles. That tends to eliminate the 1901 and 1903 oppositions.
H.G. Wells wrote:
Yet the next day there was nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the Daily Telegraph.... I might not have heard of the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer, at Ottershaw. He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess of his feelings invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a scrutiny of the red planet.... That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I saw it. A reddish flash at the edge, the slightest projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and at that I told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm...
This provides interesting fodder for narrowing the date - the narrator observed the launch of a Martian cylinder on a "warm night" from the observatory at Ottershaw, about 20 miles southwest of London on the 13th of whatever month the cylinders were launched. If the travel time of the Martian cylinders could be deduced, one could work backwards from the date of the relevant opposition and utilize weather records to determine if the weather would have been warm on the 13th of that month as confirmation the correct opposition was being selected. Further means to narrow this down is provided by this passage:
H.G. Wells wrote:
One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been 10,000,000 miles away) I went for a walk with my wife.
This would imply another warm night after the first cylinder had covered approximately 75% of the distance between Mars and the Earth. How long would that take? Wells seems to suggest the Martians employed some sort of enormous gun similar to that used in the Jules Verne novel "From the Earth to the Moon", shooting the cylinders at the Earth. This would require a speed in excess of the Martian escape velocity of nearly 11,200 mph and - assuming the lack of braking rockets of any kind - below the terrestrial escape velocity of just over 25,000 mph (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity). Assuming a roughly 40 million mile distance between the planets, the journey would take between 67 and 149 days, more or less, or about ten to 21 weeks prior to the date of closest approach. 75% of the distance could be covered between seven to sixteen weeks prior to the date of closest approach.
Finally, from later chapters:
H.G. Wells wrote:
If one could have hung that June morning in a balloon in the blazing blue above London every northward and eastward road running out of the tangled maze of streets would have seemed stippled black with the streaming fugitives, each dot a human agony of terror and physical distress. (Book I, Chapter 17)
...and...
H.G. Wells wrote:
And while within we fought out our dark, dim contest of whispers, snatched food and drink, and gripping hands and blows, without, in the pitiless sunlight of that terrible June, was the strange wonder, the unfamiliar routine of the Martians in the pit. (Book II, Chapter 3)
...both of which indicate the invasion took place in June. Both the 1905 and 1907 oppositions bracket June, but the closest approach distance of the latter is not "more than forty millions of miles", favoring the 1905 opposition as the most likely year of the initial invasion. The launch would then have taken place anytime between late October of 1904 and late February of 1905, with the narrator's walk with his wife occurring between December of 1904 and early March of 1905. Assuming "warm" to be used in the relative sense, i.e. implying above average temperatures, UK Met Office records show above average temperatures between October 1904 and February of 1905, with the exception of November. (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/archive/monthly-weather-report-1...)
In the Epilogue (Book II, Chapter 10), we are offered a few additional clues:
H.G. Wells wrote:
Lessing has advanced excellent reasons for supposing that the Martians have actually succeeded in effecting a landing on the planet
Venus. Seven months ago now, Venus and Mars were in alignment with the sun; that is to say, Mars was in opposition from the point of view of an observer on Venus. Subsequently a peculiar luminous and sinuous marking appeared on the unillumined half of the inner planet, and almost simultaneously a faint dark mark of a similar sinuous character was detected upon a photograph of the Martian disk. One needs to see the drawings of these appearances in order to appreciate fully their remarkable resemblance in character.
This implies that a during a "close approach" of Mars to Venus some 5 years and 5 months following the invasion of Earth by Mars, the Martians attempted to invade Venus. My 'search fu' was insufficient to the task of determining when these approaches would occur, though I was able to determine they have a "synodic" period averaging a hair below 334 days and that there were "transits" of Venus - i.e. crossings in front of the sun - visible from Mars in 1896, 1898 and 1900, but not again until 1928. Note that due to differences in the inclination of the orbital planes of the planets, not every "close approach" would be characterized by a transit. Any astronomers reading this are welcome to provide me with the relevant data.
Also in the Epilogue is this:
H.G. Wells wrote:
At present the planet Mars is in conjunction, but with every return to opposition I, for one, anticipate a renewal of their adventure.
The phrase "in conjunction" refers specifically to the astronomical term indicating that Mars is on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth. Taken with the statement above, it indicates Mars reached this conjunction about seven months after a close approach of Venus.
So, the most plausible date for the initial invasion, given Well's text is 1905, but this really places it far too late for Alien Dungeon's intriguing "steam tank" premise, in fact almost to the 1908 date they propose for the second invasion.
What other possibilities are there? If we discard Wells' assertion that the initial invasion took place "early in the twentieth century", it places the pre-1900 oppositions in 1890, 1892, 1894, 1896 and 1899 on the table. Of those, both the 1890 and 1892 oppositions happened during summer, at least providing plausible alignment with a "terrible June", with the former's 27 May date having a far stronger claim. But both the 1892 and 1894 oppositions are far more likely in terms of the closest approach, with latter being the best claim. If, however, one considers the 1898 publication date and the narrator's statement that "The storm burst upon us six years ago now," then the 1892 opposition seems a valid claim, though given that the novel was first published in serial form a year earlier and the actual writing occurred between 1895 and 1897, this may be more supportive of the 1890 opposition. Yet all of these oppositions suffer almost the opposite problem from the most likely candidate of 1905 - they are a bit too early to support Alien Dungeon's existing background material.
That being the case, I proffer the suggestion that the initial invasion be assume to have occurred during the 1899 opposition with the second invasion occurring during the 1907 or 1909 oppositions. The latter fits the decade span between the invasions perfectly, while the former offers the possibility of the June 30, 1908 Tunguska Event (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event) some how being tied to the Martians.
Having established the possible dates of the two invasions, I return to the question of the scope of the initial invasion. Wells establishes that ten cylinders were fired at the Earth:
H.G. Wells wrote:
Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night.
...but only seven landing sites are established in the novel, along the rivers Whey and Thames in the vicinity of London (http://www.freewebs.com/wotwfaq/timeline.htm). Alien Dungeon's background material assumes that the British exclusively have reverse engineered some aspects of Martian technology, or at least have the lead in doing so. With 7 of 10 cylinders landing in the vicinity of London, this certainly seems plausible. It would imply that the remaining three cylinders were also targeted at Britain. This seems a reasonable assumption. If the Martians' intent was a limited invasion to establish a permanent foothold, they could certainly do little better than an "Island fortress" such as Britain while simultaneously crushing the heart of the then most powerful empire on Earth in the process. The Martians successful experimentation with flight (Book II, Chapter 7) certainly would provide them an advantage in eventually spreading their conquest beyond its British beachhead.
However, we have no confirmation of this in Wells' text - which is written in the form of a personal memoir of the experiences of the narrator and his brother, both of whom lived within or in the vicinity of London - of where the remaining three cylinders landed. The flight of the narrator's brother by sea to Ostend does imply that Continental Europe was unscathed by the invasion. And the some of the text in the penultimate chapter (Chapter 9 of Book II) offers clues that the invasion was confined to England:
H.G. Wells wrote:
I have learned since that, so far from my being the first discoverer of the Martian overthrow, several such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the previous night. One man--the first--had gone to St. Martin's-le-Grand, and, while I sheltered in the cabmen's hut, had contrived to telegraph to Paris. Thence the joyful news had flashed all over the world; a thousand cities, hilled by ghastly apprehensions, suddenly flashed into frantic illuminations; they knew of it in Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham.... Across the Channel, across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic, corn, bread, and meat were tearing to our relief. All the shipping in the world seemed going Londonward in those days.
This implies that France - and probably the rest of the Continent, Ireland, North America, Scotland and even the north of England were unscathed by the invasion. More clues, however, exist in the escape of the narrator's brother (Book I, Chapter 17):
H.G. Wells wrote:
He heard that about half the members of the government had gathered at Birmingham, and that enormous quantities of high explosives were being prepared to be used in automatic mines across the Midland counties.
This provides some confirmation that the north of England was unscathed by the Martian invasion.
H.G. Wells wrote:
For after the sailors could no longer come up the Thames, they came on to the Essex coast, to Harwich and Walton and Clacton, and
afterwards to Foulness and Shoebury, to bring off the people. They lay in a huge sickle-shaped curve that vanished into mist at last towards the Naze. Close inshore was a multitude of fishing smacks--English, Scotch, French, Dutch, and Swedish; steam launches from the Thames, yachts, electric boats; and beyond were ships of large burden, a multitude of filthy colliers, trim merchantmen, cattle ships, passenger boats, petroleum tanks, ocean tramps, an old white transport even, neat white and grey liners from Southampton and Hamburg; and along the blue coast across the Blackwater my brother could make out dimly a dense swarm of boats chaffering with the people on the beach, a swarm which also extended up the Blackwater almost to Maldon.
The implications here are that the Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden and Scotland were able to assist in the evacuation, as were ocean liners from Southampton, some 40 miles southwest of London, indicating that these nations or regions were not themselves dealing with Martian invaders. However, the narrator's brother had a harrowing escape:
H.G. Wells wrote:
The little steamer was already flapping her way eastward of the big crescent of shipping, and the low Essex coast was growing blue and hazy, when a Martian appeared, small and faint in the remote distance, advancing along the muddy coast from the direction of Foulness....Then, far away beyond the Crouch, came another, striding over some stunted trees, and then yet another, still farther
off, wading deeply through a shiny mudflat that seemed to hang halfway up between sea and sky. They were all stalking seaward, as if to intercept the escape of the multitudinous vessels that were crowded between Foulness and the Naze.
Given that - of the seven cylinders accounted for - the nearest and latest landed of them was near the center of London (Primrose Hill), with the remaining six distributed south and east of the city, it seems probable that the three unaccounted for cylinders fell to the east of London, with at least one cylinder north of the Thames.
So, in conclusion, I propose that the most likely counter-factuals underpinning the AQOTMF universe are an initial invasion of Southern England by the Martians in mid to late January of 1899 with the second, larger invasion occurring during the 1907 or 1909 oppositions. I certainly welcome commentary on this proposal from the creative team behind the game.
In the second part of this article, I will propose what changes in history as we know it occurred in the AQOTMF timeline between the two invasions.
Establishing an Allohistorical Chronology Part I
By Bill Andel
The setting of Alien Dungeon's All Quiet On The Martian Front (AQOTMF) is based on the tantalizing counter-factuals that the ultimately failed Martian invasion written of in H. G. Wells The War of the Worlds (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36.txt.utf-8) actually happened and was followed up by a much larger invasion a decade later which establishes strong footholds in the Southern hemisphere, Siberia and the Great Plains of the United States, with the latter being contained by fierce resistance on the part of American forces.
In order to increase the verisimilitude of this exciting setting, I propose establishing an allohistorical chronology of the events which transpired in the world following the initial counter-factual, i.e. the initial invasion of England by Mars. In order to do this however, one must first place that invasion in time and determine its scope. Why is this important? Because it is the jumping off point where our own history and that of the setting of AQOTMF. If, as stated in Alien Dungeon's current background material, the first invasion occurred in 1898 (the year Well's novel was published), would a devastated England be capable of waging the protracted and bitter Boer War which commenced the following year? If the invasion was global, rather than confined to England, and assuming the United States were equally affected, would they have been capable of acquiring and completing construction of the Panama Canal? In order to build a detailed and credible background for the setting, it becomes necessary to understand the ripples set in motion by the dropping of the counter-factual rock into the historical pond.
Why not simply accept the proposed dating in the current background material? The difficulty with this is that it lacks plausibility. The primary reason for this is orbital mechanics and their mention in the source materials:
H.G. Wells wrote:
As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as flaming gases rushed out of a gun."
The most significant part of the passage cited is the first clause is "As Mars approached opposition." Opposition is an astronomical term for a celestial object appearing directly opposite from the sun by an observer on Earth. Assuming, for a moment, that, planetary orbits are circular and co-planar (they are neither, but it makes for a simpler example), this would be the point at which Mars would be closest to Earth. The Earth's mean orbital distance is approximately 93 million miles and Mars' approximately 142 million miles, meaning that when in opposition Mars would be about 49 million miles away (it actually can get much closer, as we will see). The period between oppositions, or "synodic period", is two years and 49 days. So, with our circular model, at a year and 24.5 days from opposition, or thereabouts (which assumes the simplification constant orbital velocity, also not really the case), Mars would be opposite the sun from the Earth and be 235 million miles away. This is nearly five times the distance at opposition.
Wells' Martians were technological geniuses that - if not foiled by terrestrial microorganisms completely beyond their ken - may very well have succeeded in the overthrow and enslavement of humanity's domination of our home world. They would not have overlooked simple orbital mechanics and launched their invasion at any other time than "as Mars approached opposition". Incidentally, the choice of verbs - "approached" - is also significant. The Martians would have "led" the Earth in their launches the way a duck hunter leads a duck, so that their cylinders intercepted the Earth at the point of closest approach, rather than inefficiently pursuing the Earth after the fact.
Now, the fact is that planetary orbits are neither circular nor co-planar and orbital velocities vary from point to point along a planet's orbit due to the gravitational influence of other planetary bodies. The results of this are two-fold: first, the distance at point of closest approach (CA) of Mars and Earth to one another will vary from opposition to opposition by more than +/-10 million miles from our circular simplification, above; second, the time of closest approach may vary from the time of opposition by as much as +/-8.5 days. The former is far more significant, as it offers the Martians the possibility of reducing the distance traveled to invade the Earth by a further 20 million miles.
Now, with the astronomical context firmly established, when were the oppositions of Mars around the turn of the century?
Date Closest Approach (MMi)
---- --------
27 May 1890 54.0
03 Aug 1892 35.0 *
20 Oct 1984 40.0 *
10 Dec 1896 52.0
18 Jan 1899 60.0
22 Feb 1901 63.0
29 Mar 1903 59.5
08 May 1905 50.5
06 Jul 1907 38.2 *
24 Sep 1909 36.4 *
25 Nov 1911 48.1
05 Jan 1914 58.1
I have indicated the most favorable closest approach distances with an asterisk. (Popular Science News, Vol. 35 - available for preview from Google Books for oppositions before 1900, www.uapress.arizona.edu/onlinebks/MARS/APPENDS.HTM for oppositions after 1900).
Does Wells offer clues to indicate when the invasion occurred? Indeed he does, many of which are cited in an interesting article, "Dating The War of the Worlds" (http://www.freewebs.com/wotwfaq/dating.htm). The article claims much of the information Wells provides is contradictory, but this seems to be the case only in attempting to reconciling those passages with the author's contention of a 1901 invasion.
Most of the relevant passages to consider are primarily in Chapter 1 of Book I:
H.G. Wells wrote:
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...
...and...
H.G. Wells wrote:
Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century.
Thus, we know the Martians were preparing for their invasion prior to the turn of the century.
H.G. Wells wrote:
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.
This implies 1901 as the earliest possible invasion date.
H.G. Wells wrote:
During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the illuminated part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory, then by Perrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard of it first in the issue of Nature dated August 2. I am inclined to think that this blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun, in the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us.
In fact, this was Wells' touchstone, as the journal Nature did in fact report on a phenomenon of incandescence observed on Mars by Perrotin and Lavelle of the Nice observatory during the 1894 opposition, though this has been satisfactorily explained in modern times (http://www.alpo-astronomy.org/mars/articles/MartianFlaresALP...).
H.G. Wells wrote:
Peculiar markings, as yet unexplained, were seen near the site of that outbreak during the next two oppositions.
This would refer to the oppositions of 1896 and 1899, respectively.
H.G. Wells wrote:
The storm burst upon us six years ago now.
This indicates that the narrator is penning his memoir six years after the invasion took place.
H.G. Wells wrote:
As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as flaming gases rushed out of a gun."
So far Wells text seems to indicate that invasion took place at leas two oppositions after that of 1894, thus 1899 at the earliest. But this doe snot jibe with his "early in the twentieth century" comment, above, which would tend to indicate the invasion occurred no earlier than the 1901 opposition.
H.G. Wells wrote:
As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye was tired. Forty millions of miles it was from us--more than forty millions of miles of void.
This passage tends to contra-indicate oppositions in which the point of closest approach is less than 40 million miles, nor those much greater than 40 million Miles. That tends to eliminate the 1901 and 1903 oppositions.
H.G. Wells wrote:
Yet the next day there was nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the Daily Telegraph.... I might not have heard of the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer, at Ottershaw. He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess of his feelings invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a scrutiny of the red planet.... That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I saw it. A reddish flash at the edge, the slightest projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and at that I told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm...
This provides interesting fodder for narrowing the date - the narrator observed the launch of a Martian cylinder on a "warm night" from the observatory at Ottershaw, about 20 miles southwest of London on the 13th of whatever month the cylinders were launched. If the travel time of the Martian cylinders could be deduced, one could work backwards from the date of the relevant opposition and utilize weather records to determine if the weather would have been warm on the 13th of that month as confirmation the correct opposition was being selected. Further means to narrow this down is provided by this passage:
H.G. Wells wrote:
One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been 10,000,000 miles away) I went for a walk with my wife.
This would imply another warm night after the first cylinder had covered approximately 75% of the distance between Mars and the Earth. How long would that take? Wells seems to suggest the Martians employed some sort of enormous gun similar to that used in the Jules Verne novel "From the Earth to the Moon", shooting the cylinders at the Earth. This would require a speed in excess of the Martian escape velocity of nearly 11,200 mph and - assuming the lack of braking rockets of any kind - below the terrestrial escape velocity of just over 25,000 mph (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity). Assuming a roughly 40 million mile distance between the planets, the journey would take between 67 and 149 days, more or less, or about ten to 21 weeks prior to the date of closest approach. 75% of the distance could be covered between seven to sixteen weeks prior to the date of closest approach.
Finally, from later chapters:
H.G. Wells wrote:
If one could have hung that June morning in a balloon in the blazing blue above London every northward and eastward road running out of the tangled maze of streets would have seemed stippled black with the streaming fugitives, each dot a human agony of terror and physical distress. (Book I, Chapter 17)
...and...
H.G. Wells wrote:
And while within we fought out our dark, dim contest of whispers, snatched food and drink, and gripping hands and blows, without, in the pitiless sunlight of that terrible June, was the strange wonder, the unfamiliar routine of the Martians in the pit. (Book II, Chapter 3)
...both of which indicate the invasion took place in June. Both the 1905 and 1907 oppositions bracket June, but the closest approach distance of the latter is not "more than forty millions of miles", favoring the 1905 opposition as the most likely year of the initial invasion. The launch would then have taken place anytime between late October of 1904 and late February of 1905, with the narrator's walk with his wife occurring between December of 1904 and early March of 1905. Assuming "warm" to be used in the relative sense, i.e. implying above average temperatures, UK Met Office records show above average temperatures between October 1904 and February of 1905, with the exception of November. (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/archive/monthly-weather-report-1...)
In the Epilogue (Book II, Chapter 10), we are offered a few additional clues:
H.G. Wells wrote:
Lessing has advanced excellent reasons for supposing that the Martians have actually succeeded in effecting a landing on the planet
Venus. Seven months ago now, Venus and Mars were in alignment with the sun; that is to say, Mars was in opposition from the point of view of an observer on Venus. Subsequently a peculiar luminous and sinuous marking appeared on the unillumined half of the inner planet, and almost simultaneously a faint dark mark of a similar sinuous character was detected upon a photograph of the Martian disk. One needs to see the drawings of these appearances in order to appreciate fully their remarkable resemblance in character.
This implies that a during a "close approach" of Mars to Venus some 5 years and 5 months following the invasion of Earth by Mars, the Martians attempted to invade Venus. My 'search fu' was insufficient to the task of determining when these approaches would occur, though I was able to determine they have a "synodic" period averaging a hair below 334 days and that there were "transits" of Venus - i.e. crossings in front of the sun - visible from Mars in 1896, 1898 and 1900, but not again until 1928. Note that due to differences in the inclination of the orbital planes of the planets, not every "close approach" would be characterized by a transit. Any astronomers reading this are welcome to provide me with the relevant data.
Also in the Epilogue is this:
H.G. Wells wrote:
At present the planet Mars is in conjunction, but with every return to opposition I, for one, anticipate a renewal of their adventure.
The phrase "in conjunction" refers specifically to the astronomical term indicating that Mars is on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth. Taken with the statement above, it indicates Mars reached this conjunction about seven months after a close approach of Venus.
So, the most plausible date for the initial invasion, given Well's text is 1905, but this really places it far too late for Alien Dungeon's intriguing "steam tank" premise, in fact almost to the 1908 date they propose for the second invasion.
What other possibilities are there? If we discard Wells' assertion that the initial invasion took place "early in the twentieth century", it places the pre-1900 oppositions in 1890, 1892, 1894, 1896 and 1899 on the table. Of those, both the 1890 and 1892 oppositions happened during summer, at least providing plausible alignment with a "terrible June", with the former's 27 May date having a far stronger claim. But both the 1892 and 1894 oppositions are far more likely in terms of the closest approach, with latter being the best claim. If, however, one considers the 1898 publication date and the narrator's statement that "The storm burst upon us six years ago now," then the 1892 opposition seems a valid claim, though given that the novel was first published in serial form a year earlier and the actual writing occurred between 1895 and 1897, this may be more supportive of the 1890 opposition. Yet all of these oppositions suffer almost the opposite problem from the most likely candidate of 1905 - they are a bit too early to support Alien Dungeon's existing background material.
That being the case, I proffer the suggestion that the initial invasion be assume to have occurred during the 1899 opposition with the second invasion occurring during the 1907 or 1909 oppositions. The latter fits the decade span between the invasions perfectly, while the former offers the possibility of the June 30, 1908 Tunguska Event (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event) some how being tied to the Martians.
Having established the possible dates of the two invasions, I return to the question of the scope of the initial invasion. Wells establishes that ten cylinders were fired at the Earth:
H.G. Wells wrote:
Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night.
...but only seven landing sites are established in the novel, along the rivers Whey and Thames in the vicinity of London (http://www.freewebs.com/wotwfaq/timeline.htm). Alien Dungeon's background material assumes that the British exclusively have reverse engineered some aspects of Martian technology, or at least have the lead in doing so. With 7 of 10 cylinders landing in the vicinity of London, this certainly seems plausible. It would imply that the remaining three cylinders were also targeted at Britain. This seems a reasonable assumption. If the Martians' intent was a limited invasion to establish a permanent foothold, they could certainly do little better than an "Island fortress" such as Britain while simultaneously crushing the heart of the then most powerful empire on Earth in the process. The Martians successful experimentation with flight (Book II, Chapter 7) certainly would provide them an advantage in eventually spreading their conquest beyond its British beachhead.
However, we have no confirmation of this in Wells' text - which is written in the form of a personal memoir of the experiences of the narrator and his brother, both of whom lived within or in the vicinity of London - of where the remaining three cylinders landed. The flight of the narrator's brother by sea to Ostend does imply that Continental Europe was unscathed by the invasion. And the some of the text in the penultimate chapter (Chapter 9 of Book II) offers clues that the invasion was confined to England:
H.G. Wells wrote:
I have learned since that, so far from my being the first discoverer of the Martian overthrow, several such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the previous night. One man--the first--had gone to St. Martin's-le-Grand, and, while I sheltered in the cabmen's hut, had contrived to telegraph to Paris. Thence the joyful news had flashed all over the world; a thousand cities, hilled by ghastly apprehensions, suddenly flashed into frantic illuminations; they knew of it in Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham.... Across the Channel, across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic, corn, bread, and meat were tearing to our relief. All the shipping in the world seemed going Londonward in those days.
This implies that France - and probably the rest of the Continent, Ireland, North America, Scotland and even the north of England were unscathed by the invasion. More clues, however, exist in the escape of the narrator's brother (Book I, Chapter 17):
H.G. Wells wrote:
He heard that about half the members of the government had gathered at Birmingham, and that enormous quantities of high explosives were being prepared to be used in automatic mines across the Midland counties.
This provides some confirmation that the north of England was unscathed by the Martian invasion.
H.G. Wells wrote:
For after the sailors could no longer come up the Thames, they came on to the Essex coast, to Harwich and Walton and Clacton, and
afterwards to Foulness and Shoebury, to bring off the people. They lay in a huge sickle-shaped curve that vanished into mist at last towards the Naze. Close inshore was a multitude of fishing smacks--English, Scotch, French, Dutch, and Swedish; steam launches from the Thames, yachts, electric boats; and beyond were ships of large burden, a multitude of filthy colliers, trim merchantmen, cattle ships, passenger boats, petroleum tanks, ocean tramps, an old white transport even, neat white and grey liners from Southampton and Hamburg; and along the blue coast across the Blackwater my brother could make out dimly a dense swarm of boats chaffering with the people on the beach, a swarm which also extended up the Blackwater almost to Maldon.
The implications here are that the Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden and Scotland were able to assist in the evacuation, as were ocean liners from Southampton, some 40 miles southwest of London, indicating that these nations or regions were not themselves dealing with Martian invaders. However, the narrator's brother had a harrowing escape:
H.G. Wells wrote:
The little steamer was already flapping her way eastward of the big crescent of shipping, and the low Essex coast was growing blue and hazy, when a Martian appeared, small and faint in the remote distance, advancing along the muddy coast from the direction of Foulness....Then, far away beyond the Crouch, came another, striding over some stunted trees, and then yet another, still farther
off, wading deeply through a shiny mudflat that seemed to hang halfway up between sea and sky. They were all stalking seaward, as if to intercept the escape of the multitudinous vessels that were crowded between Foulness and the Naze.
Given that - of the seven cylinders accounted for - the nearest and latest landed of them was near the center of London (Primrose Hill), with the remaining six distributed south and east of the city, it seems probable that the three unaccounted for cylinders fell to the east of London, with at least one cylinder north of the Thames.
So, in conclusion, I propose that the most likely counter-factuals underpinning the AQOTMF universe are an initial invasion of Southern England by the Martians in mid to late January of 1899 with the second, larger invasion occurring during the 1907 or 1909 oppositions. I certainly welcome commentary on this proposal from the creative team behind the game.
In the second part of this article, I will propose what changes in history as we know it occurred in the AQOTMF timeline between the two invasions.
