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Hugh Spencer and HG Well's War of the Worlds image

Hugh Spencer and HG Well's War of the Worlds

S3 E55 · Re-Creative: A podcast about inspiration and creativity
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93 Plays2 months ago

Canadian science fiction writer Hugh A. D. Spencer joins the lads to talk about one of his favorite bits of audio – the original radio play of The War of the Worlds.

The novel by H. G. Wells was written in the 1890s, and adapted by Orson Welles for his Mercury Theatre in 1938. Howard Koch adapted the story for the radio. Koch used the trope of the news flash to tell the story, and this led many listeners who had missed the start of the radio play to think the invasion was real.

It caused a panic.

Joe, Mark and Hugh have a great time talking about the effects of the radio play, science fiction in general, and the impact of the play on Hugh's own work.

For more information, check out the show notes for this episode. 

Re-Creative is produced by Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with MonkeyJoy Press

Contact us at [email protected]

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Transcript

Greetings and Reflections

00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, Mark. Joe, how is it going? It's going... It's going! Are you well? Boy, I'm so much better than I was the last recording that we did. Of course, I have no idea what order we're going to play these in. Yeah, so it might not make any sense. yeah but but yeah I noted that and I think it's a connection to what we're going to talk about today.

Sickest Experiences?

00:00:29
Speaker
so My question for today was, what's the sickest you've ever been if you feel like sharing? You you might not want to share this. No, that's it. When have I ever not wanted to share anything? ah but there i I might find something that eventually you or the guest doesn't want to talk about, which is fine.
00:00:44
Speaker
which Okay, that's a challenge. Yeah. But for now, I have no trouble answering that question. I just got to cast my mind back. I mean, okay, the first thing that comes to mind, when I was about nine, I was so sick that I i couldn't even move. I just laid on the couch for what felt like days.
00:01:06
Speaker
And, and I remember, and probably you guys can relate to this. I remember having to use the washroom and I'm like, yeah, too bad. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to make it. That's pretty sick. Yeah. That was just sort of the type of sickness. What, okay. What about you? Well, mine is similar. I mean, I, I caught amoebic dysentery in Thailand and that one, I just didn't leave the bathroom. That was the solution there.
00:01:32
Speaker
But I was very sick. At one point, my my temperature was, I would have been, let's see, my age is important in this because the temperature was pretty shocking. 104.3.
00:01:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's pretty high. Which is pretty dangerous, yeah. My skin was so hot, I would like take a shower, like a cold shower to try and cool myself down. And my skin was so hot that I would dry off before I had a chance to get a towel and towel myself off. Holy cow. Yeah, it was crazy. Amoebic dysentery. Amoebic dysentery. Yeah, so this is what happens when you just get there and you think, oh, I'll hold everything off the street, like all these street vendors. That looks good. I'll try that. I'll try that.
00:02:12
Speaker
Okay, not doing that. Rookie mistake. Now, what about

Guest Hugh's Illness Stories

00:02:16
Speaker
our guest? Hugh Spencer. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Do you want to know what? I'm torn between two stories. One is when I was, when I actually was 10 when I wasn't that sick, but it had grisly consequences in the household. um I was 10 years old and ah in Saskatoon and we went to a parade And I came back not feeling that well, kind of dizzy and feverish. and I was the youngest of six, so we were all bringing diseases home. and yeah every little sicknesses Little petri dishes. I'm amazed that any all of us live to an adulthood. But I then had a really blistering headache and felt crappy and sort of a little like you, Joe, but I did actually get to the bathroom.
00:03:03
Speaker
And it turned out it had scarlet fever, o that's all which is very exciting. I was really thrilled to have such an exciting sound at that illness. I had to wear mirrored sunglasses for about a month, which I thought was pretty cool. So I didn't mind that very much. But the bad thing was that the guy from the City Department of Health came around.
00:03:27
Speaker
in case we'd have a scarlet fever outbreak and quarantined our house. And so but my sister's hating me because there is this big sign on the door saying quarantined. The senses are disgusting and filthy and diseased.
00:03:43
Speaker
My teenage girl the sister girls do not like having a quarantine site in their house. I think i would have been I was in verge being of dying, but from them, not from that. Murder. so You thought it was cool to um you know to have scarlet fever. What is the cutoff? you know It's like, okay, it's cool to have a scarlet fever, but bubonic plague, maybe not so. you know Well, the that is like the other story, which I won't go into too easily, but I once was in Singapore and I had to get a root canal without anesthetic, which was actually the inspiration for my first novel. Extreme dentistry. Yeah. and the ah I will say for that whole experience, one, the dentist is a really nice guy, did not want to hurt me. This is the local anesthetics and the other as just wouldn't work and we're in a situation where it could do in general. and
00:04:38
Speaker
ah So it took him all night to dig the root out of this tooth. And I think I saw God six or seven times.
00:04:51
Speaker
Was he was saying something like, at poor bastard? Something like that, or you deserve this. That looks awful. Yeah. For all those things you did while you had scarlet fever. You know, it's funny that we're talking to you today, and you told the story about getting a root canal, and you wrote a book, your first book was called Extreme Dentistry. I was at the dentist this morning, actually. Oh. Yeah. It's infernicity.
00:05:18
Speaker
But okay, Mark, maybe we should explain this or have Hugh explain as we are want to do who he is.

Hugh's Writing and Radio Plays

00:05:24
Speaker
Hugh, tell us about yourself. Well, who is anyone really? i I'm a science fiction writer.
00:05:33
Speaker
A Canadian science fiction writer. So as as you all can imagine, kids, I make dozens of dollars.
00:05:42
Speaker
Most wretched of specimens. A Canadian science fiction writer. I've had a number of, now four books out. But you know as well as writing short stories and and novels, I like to write radio plays. And I will do a small plug that my collection of my radio plays called The the Fabulous Play Cycle ah is was out in January. It's a collection of a series of related science and radio plays that were produced by Shoestring Radio Theater in San Francisco and are available I think one New York station is streaming them and another they're on the public radio radio exchange somewhere and some on the internet archive
00:06:31
Speaker
So not just the book is available but the actual radio plays. We'll get the link for that up on the show notes once we've put those together. yeah so there're but anyway I've had a long time love of science fiction but also of radio.
00:06:48
Speaker
And I actually think radio is the perfect medium for science fiction, you know, first of all, because the visual effects are fantastic. yeah oh yeah You know, and years ago, a friend of mine and colleague Alan Weiss and I curated an exhibition of Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy for the National Library. And Alan, who was a rhota the one of the more comprehensive indexes of Canadian short stories, did all the stuff that was on typewriters, you know, all the written stuff, the prose and things. And I did the media, which when this project came out was in the mid 90s. But we discovered actually that there was a whole bunch of Canadian science fiction on the radio.
00:07:35
Speaker
ah There was, of course, Joe, you probably remember Vanishing Point. and yeah Not only do I remember Vanishing Point, I was friends with the man who made it, Bill Lane. Well, I know Bill too, yeah yeah. I was also part of a group at Allicom television that want to have the science fiction channel in Canada. We didn't get it. But we were talking to Bill about doing a TV version of of Vanishing Point. And so it didn't happen, which was too bad. Like most good things in television in Canada don't happen. Yeah, he was a real cool guy. You know, port Bill passed away just a year or two ago.
00:08:14
Speaker
I didn't know that, that's for a second. I really liked him. A very quick story about a vanishing point when they were when he was pitching it to the CBC brass. They said, well but what can we expect? And he just, like on the spur of the moment, he thought, what can what can you expect? You can expect the unexpected. <unk> that They're proud of that line.
00:08:35
Speaker
it's a very I think, that yeah, that's a good line. and yeah But now, in now Hugh, you ah are we allowed to mention your former day job? ah Sure. I don't think you're doing it anymore, right? you were and Tell us about that.
00:08:47
Speaker
Oh, I was a museum consultant. I am still doing a bit of that. I was with a number of companies, which i since I compete with them now, sometimes I don't mention, as I say, on another network. ah But I've worked on about ah maybe over 100 different museum studies over the world and exhibitions. I worked on a couple of world's fairs for the Canada Pavilion and in Seville in Expo 92 and then Taejeong Korea in Expo 93 actually got to write the script treatment for the simulator ride that was in the Canada Pavilion that year and took Koreans on a high-speed ride across Canada.
00:09:24
Speaker
And I got to work with the people that made Tour of the Universe, the base of the CN Tower, that that simulated trip to Jupiter. though I used to love that thing. but so and And that was a lot of fun. And, you know, I worked with the yeah the Visions of Earth Gallery at the Natural History Museum in London, in the Royal Ontario Museum. and So yeah, it's an illustrious ah museum career. I know, I'm kind of circling towards retirement as I get over, but I've still got a few things going. Now, I'm just going to take ah just a second here and point out that, and I think never before, Mark, have I seen you dip into your fridge behind you. Well, I was worried that you could hear it.
00:10:06
Speaker
Oh, no, because it was making a high pitched noise that I could hear. and I was like, I bet that you're going for a beer. No, I know. but it was important one tough No, i I apologize for that. But that's why I did it because I thought I i couldn't see anything in my waveform. But I'm like, yeah just in case it's the kind of sound that would make people go.
00:10:25
Speaker
ah know and throw their no their devices away. Yeah, I just wouldn't EQ'd it out. Well, you know, you've got digressions that will do that. I'm just going to use that as a segue to talk about, because just before we started recording, Hugh, we were talking about um your office, and I guess I i meant it as a compliment, ah certainly not as ah as a dig, that it it looks a delightfully chaotic.
00:10:49
Speaker
Well, it's all full of VHS tapes and my and books, the RT camera, and lots lots and lots of books. I think the ones in the back there are John Mortiper's collected rumpled books because I have all of that show and I like those stories. um Lots of science fiction in here. um I like to research UFOs, not whether they really exist or anything or conspiracy theories, but the cultural history of UFOs.
00:11:18
Speaker
Uh, and sort of, uh, uh, so people keep giving me books about UF. So I have a lot of them. yeah And, so i I find them, most of them hysterically funny, but yeah. Of course. That's, I smell a segue though. Oh. Cause I do think that might be related to the piece of art that you wanted to talk about today.
00:11:41
Speaker
That is true.

'War of the Worlds' Radio History

00:11:42
Speaker
yeah I really want to talk about The War of the Worlds. The H.G. Wells' novel, The War of the Worlds. And I know that it was written in the late 1890s. There's some really fun stories about how he came to write it, what it represented and and all that. and ah But anyway, it is a classic. By the time it was adapted by Orson Welles,
00:12:08
Speaker
in 1938 for Halloween on Mercury, Theory of the Era, which was sort of a quasi-national reclamation agency project, you know, the Mercury Theater one. Anyway, yeah thank you, President Roosevelt. It was kind of considered a bit a hidebound in Moribund. I think it's now kind of chic again because it's sort of steampunk-y, you know? Right, right, yeah. It's a Victorian science fiction then.
00:12:34
Speaker
And I discovered it because my grandfather, veteran of both World Wars and moved from Utah to to Canada in 1901 as a boy, gave me his copy, which was printed in 1924. And he gave it to me in 1970.
00:12:50
Speaker
and not And it was like old. I still got around the house somewhere. I never take it out because it's, you know, kind of fragile. But I read it and I was so surprised how interesting and exciting it was, even though the language isn't a lot. and And, you know, I heard of the invasion stories were sort of not that unusual in science fiction in the 60s and 70s, but I just really thought it was very fresh and everything. And um so it was always sort of in the back of my mind is one of my favorites. And I started reading other H.G. Wells on the the time machine eyes.
00:13:24
Speaker
one of my favorite books i recommend that and yeah yeah we've talked about that with someone else yeah robert charles wilson yeah yeah yeah well that was a big influence too but but what happened was that i had the same time in the early 70s concept albums were becoming very big and also spoken word comedy albums, very highly produced with stereophonic sound. And I once read years later that it was because that apparently ah cannabis makes the so the appreciation of sound effects and music all that more vivid. I keep wondering, because is this where teaching song albums came from? And where are they? Another one, which is the Fire Sign Theater.
00:14:07
Speaker
which I absolutely love their albums. And they actually ended up doing a fair bit of prototypical Douglas Adams style humor like, oh, I think we're all bozos on this bus and don't crush that dwarf hammy, the pliers, which I still, I love. And they are influenced by the goons, which is one of the, I was fortunate because I didn't have to suffer dad jokes. My dad just maybe listened to a goon show on the radio in the university radio station. So it was all just really weird stuff. I loved radio.
00:14:35
Speaker
My dad hated television, he only listened to the radio. And so I really was, I was primed and ready for the summer of the the fall the fall of 1973, September or something, when I wandered into the, I skipped class because I was too cool for a class, man.
00:14:56
Speaker
You still have your scarlet fever sunglasses. Yeah. yeah but And I know I had granny glasses. Okay. Hair down on my shoulders. It was the worst haircut. But but yeah but i was I wandered into the Saskatoon Public Library's main branch. And I was going through stuff and I i was a bit of a classical, becoming a classical music snob because of my 2001 album and my Clockwork Orange album.
00:15:24
Speaker
and I was discovering classical music so I was listening to Lesser Works by Bach and I found as I was going through the records looking for more because these records were actually so this music was pretty boring I found that this disc saying 1938 War of the World radio broadcast and I almost didn't listen to it because I thought, this is going to be terrible. This is going to be like, in Saskatoon, we had one channel up to 1971. And all I can tell is that if there was time distortion experiments that are being done while we're but we all had to sit through Don Messer's Jubilee to watch Star Trek, right after that, I don't know how that show, or Hockey Night in Canada was Pure Hill.
00:16:17
Speaker
because it went on forever. Even though like back there was like one game. Anyway, but I thought it's going to be like Margot's board. So these cheesy old, oh, ah you know, already terrible stuff. But I thought, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. It's not all bad because I i'd listened to Spike Jones and his city slickers that summer too. And I thought that was pretty funny. and And again, you know, folks out there go and read it. And so I put it on with the headphones and I had listened to it.
00:16:45
Speaker
and i would just
00:16:50
Speaker
transported to another universe. And it was absolutely brilliant. yeah And if you haven't heard it, I envy you, you're going to hear it again for the first time. I can still listen to it. I was even interviewed on Peter Zawsky on the radio for Morningside years, because i about the self-same topic and also really sort of, well, it came up when you I was talking about, because my background is in anthropology, about rituals associated with Halloween. So they thought, oh, a science fiction anthropologist, do we he'll have some ideas. So we ended up talking about that. I mentioned that just about every Halloween I do listen to it. And all I can say is Orson Welles tried to take credit for writing it. He didn't.
00:17:35
Speaker
It was Howard Koch, Howard W. Koch gunum being the final author on Casablanca. and right And the print version of the script, one of them, it's a panic broadcast, which Koch wrote the introduction to and he talked about how he came to write this. Now, if anyone doesn't know this script, it's done in the form of news broadcasts.
00:17:58
Speaker
And sort of allegedly in real time now, of course, if you thought for a second, you know, it wasn't yeah it's compressed too compressed because they actually get to, to from New York City to New Jersey or something and in, in, in less than 10 seconds on the old traffic wasn't as bad back then. But You know, it's a little much, but it's still very well done for its time. And you have, ah you know, there's been a number of representations on film and television about how they produce the broadcast, you know, how the sound of the Martian ah cylinders in a cylinder stuck in the ground is made by somebody putting a microphone on a pickle jar in the batman's room. to like And just all those great sort of fully stories you hear on, that's wonderful. and But I love the story about, it was part of the Mercury Theater's and season of classic works adapted for radio. And they were doing like the Three Musketeers and Sherlock Holmes. They came up to War of the Worlds and they sort of handed it to Howard W. Cottges, you got five days to write this.
00:19:05
Speaker
and wow And he, you know, I'm sure you and he let me read the book. I don't have you ah't recall if he'd read the book previously, but he read the book and was going, oh, on earth am I going to do this? And then he remembered there was a couple of productions that Wells involved with sort of were a little bit like this. And there was also the coverage of the peace talks.
00:19:29
Speaker
with Hitler in Chamberlain, and I think it was that. But anyway, in Europe, and that sort of format stuck in his head. But the final thing is, I guess, he had to soothe his nerves. When I started doing this, when I was a younger man, I used to go and get a haircut. So he was in a barber shop and a haircut, and he's sitting there, and he takes out a roadmap, and he just takes a pin, and he puts it right in Grover's Mills, New Jersey. And he said, great, that's where the Martians landed and spent the entire weekend writing the thing and came in there and handed it to Wells and John Houseman that morning, and they started rehearsals. And I think the Mercury Theater was on Thursday or Friday, and it was quite interesting. But another thing that affected me is that I, in true fanboy tradition, which I have not changed, you notice my my shirt? My space shirt? Oh, yes. Yeah, you're wearing it. I wanted to find one of the Martian things I didn't have one.
00:20:28
Speaker
But so it's a black shirt with ah like, it looks like a spiral galaxy. Planets, spaceships, nebulae. Yeah. Lock of chips. yeah i Whenever I sit at tables with my books at book fairs, I put this on because they don't have to get a sign because they know immediately I'm a science fiction writer. There's no human billboard. Anyway, back to the summer, right after I listened to this, I'm just sort of Gaga and I'm looking at this and thinking this is a more convincing with less technology than the Well, they're doing with the fire sign theater or Cheech and Chong and all these other guys Or even like pink for the people that are exploring audio environments and music back then I just thought this is just amazing and you know, although the Wells didn't write it the direction and the acting is superb and
00:21:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And just to be clear to people who may not be aware, it was done live, right? It was broadcast. Done live. And what started happening is they started getting phone calls, the switchboard saying, what's going on? You know, or where do I go? Or can I get to the police or do I sign up for the army and all this sort of stuff? Because people thought it was real. They thought it was real. And we'll get back to when a lot of people thought it was real and they weren't all dummies or hysterical nits. They saved that for our generation.
00:21:52
Speaker
ah but but they yeah So the but the nation panicked. and they And by the end of the broadcast, the the executives at CBS ah Radio came down at the studio where Wells and the crew were saying, you have to do an announcement and say that this is not, this is a radio play.
00:22:11
Speaker
Yeah. It's peculiar because only the first two thirds of the radio play, it's an hour, is that done in a news broadcast. Again, it's just chilling, you know? Yeah. The announcer's dying, horrible things happening, guns blowing up, and stupid ham radio officers. Yeah, if you just tuned in, you would you could be forgiven for thinking, oh my God. Yeah, it was clearly before the invention of the reset.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. like You're listening to Mercury Theatre's production of Lot. That's all it would have taken. Well, they did have them. They had a disclaimer at this intermission point. Oh, did they? They had you're listening to, which they usually didn't. Oh, so they did a reset, okay. So the reset didn't work. It obviously didn't work. No, because people, if they had panicked, they'd already panicked by then.
00:23:04
Speaker
And they're driving around and shooting at water towers and thinking it was their marshy fried water machines. And they actually, I did a lecture on this for the Royal Ontario Museum go for a science fiction film festival when they're showing the George Pal film of the War of the Worlds. And I did some research, get the old microfecia, the reference library out. and And they panicked up here in Toronto, too.
00:23:27
Speaker
sure cbl CBLT, I think, carried it. And ever everywhere so, you know, don't just blame the Yankees on this. It was, it was. an well So at least that Orson Welles and his crowd survived this. this Well, the Welles almost didn't. He was really caught under fire and he kind of thought his career might be over after the broadcast. He had to go out and do an immediate press conference and he he he's looking pretty worried. And he's just a kid too, right? Like he's, how old is he? 24, 25, something like that? Not the most, you know, if that. and but what and And he was vilified at first and how dare they do this and H.G. Wells heard about it because he was still alive.
00:24:11
Speaker
And he said, out there they mangled my book and all this. And then ah ah then the next day, the day after that, another, ah I can't remember his name now, the fairly important newspaper call and it said, no, this is a very excellent point of the the the temperature of the political climate of the nation and our lack of preparedness to dealing with crisis. And maybe they're right. Maybe they America got through it better in subsequent years because of the panic broadcast. and And Wells, of course, this then the Darling got his, right yeah then he gets a contract with RKO to produce Citizen Kane. And he's been, as he put it, racing for the bottom ever since. Well, I think it is important to remember the context, right? 1938, that's, you mentioned the Peasemen Talks, as we call them now, between Chamberlain and Hitler. Like there was a real feeling of this war thing could happen again.
00:25:03
Speaker
And, you know, the Japanese had already invaded China at that point. Yeah. so yeah There was an there's a very interesting book by a a sociologist from Princeton University named called haide Hadley Cantrell called the studies called the invasion from Mars. And he actually did, they did, his team did systematic surveys of the people who panicked and the people who didn't panic.
00:25:26
Speaker
The interesting thing is that, yes, there is some indication that prior religious belief, if you're a ah devout evangelist, so sort of a ritual interpretation of aspects of Scripture, ah you were probably a little more just a little more inclined to panic.
00:25:46
Speaker
And perhaps cause you're saying, you know, this is judgment day and all this horrible things are happening and the rupture and the disruption. Yeah. But the other thing that happened was, and what happened usually is that the people that panicked didn't bother to check other stations.
00:26:03
Speaker
yeah Some people who who panicked ah were about to panic went, wait a minute, and they moved over to the other radio station, at least two other networks, there was NBC and and I think Mutual at the time, and they would go over there and they'd find the, ah ah you know and they well they're they're not covering what's going on. and And one guy said, oh yeah, and I finally figured it was a great show and I really liked it.
00:26:26
Speaker
and And H.U.L. felt the same way. When he finally heard the but the broadcast, he thought it was great. thats Great adaptation, really is. And and there is a ah recording I think you find online of H.U.L.'s meeting Orson Welles during World War II, some radio station in Texas. ah It's very depressing because ah Orson Welles, of course, sounds like Orson Welles, you know. ah yeah the The H.G. Wells, on your hand, has a high squeaky voice. And think here's the titan of science fiction, you know, establishes all the genre, forms of the genre. So you're saying he had a voice for print. Yes, yes. it was an excellent A very powerful voice in print and I recommend it and read it anyway. The other things that the Cantrell study also revealed and this is just I think really cool stuff and it's very relevant today about checking your internet sources and things ah because the thing that really got them was that people tuned in late.
00:27:31
Speaker
Yeah, ah to the broad at the very beginning, the broadcast, it said this is Orson Welles, the Mercury Theater on the air and they had their theme. yeah loud that out and and And all the stuff. And then they then after that, they said, yes, the narrator comes in, but played by Orson Welles, like an estimated 30 million people were listening on radio when they then fade into the weather broadcast. And then then it becomes some ballroom dance show, which is the worst and apparently yeah I was telling the ah the the band, which was conducted by the great ah film composer Bernard Herman, saying, you don't sound bad enough.
00:28:12
Speaker
and so so But that people tuned in late because they missed all that because the number one show in ah ah on radio in the United States at the time was on NBC, not CBS, and it was the Charlie McCarthy show.
00:28:29
Speaker
For those of you younger people, that Charlie McCarthy was a ventriloquist's dummy and Edgar Berman, Candace Berman's dad, ah was the comedian who sat with him. and they did ah So of course you have a ventriloquist that is dummy and you can't see it. And the big thing is you can't see that I talk. And they have a radio show.
00:28:47
Speaker
ah But not only do they have a radio camera. Maybe there is something in the water because I still don't i don't understand how a ventriloquist works on the radio. Probably he can relax a bit. but Yeah, i guess I guess. How do you manage that? It's really easy. I just have one microphone and it changed my voice. But it was the number one show on ah radio in America.
00:29:12
Speaker
And so ah people tuned in and missed because they would listen to, like some of us listen to Colbert doing the monologue and then they'll start looking for something else, you know, because I want to hear him talk to some person. I feel like we should explain that too. For the third the young listeners who don't remember this, televisions used to have dials, not buttons.
00:29:36
Speaker
we had It was songs very analog. so are we really that old that we have to tactile out mean I suspect our listeners all know that. I have a strong suspicion. Anyway, um but the other thing though is they tuned in late, so they missed the preamble that said this is a radio play.
00:29:55
Speaker
And so it did just sound like a news broadcast going to different dance things and bulletins coming in. But the ah other problem was that some people misheard the word Martians and thought they were saying Germans. Oh my God. Yeah, there you go. And having a German invasion, when you think about the state of technology 1930, it would actually be kind of difficult for the Germans to to get all the way out to ah to New Jersey undetected. yeah yeah But still, people are really tense and worried.
00:30:28
Speaker
so it's not We can't think of them as being stupid, you know, a bunch of yokels back then. it was ah There was a lot of very good reasons for people, critical faculties, to fail them. yeah How this affected me personally was that I found this Haley Cantrill study, the invasion from Mars, in the school library at Evan Hardy Collegiate Institute. And and so because I did finally show up to the high school, my classes, because otherwise I'd be in real trouble.
00:31:00
Speaker
And I was just looking around for something interesting and I saw this, so this sort of sociological study and probably the reason I ended up studying anthropology and and getting into social science because I think it's useful to actually go out and ask people stuff or look at them, see what they do, as opposed to just listening to some rumor about them.
00:31:21
Speaker
so so Yeah, so really the broadcast had done a terrific impact on you. It perhaps determined the course of your your your career ah in ah as a museum consultant and obviously inspired you to get into into radio radio plays and write science fiction. Yeah. Well, I wish I could write something as good as anything that H.G. Wells had written because he is sort of he is a ah quite a character to study. he I think he slept with every woman in England. I'm serious. He had an insane sex life. And he was an the ear first public advocate of three love and ran off with his mistresses and had a poor wife.
00:32:07
Speaker
and be had anyway it was it was a yeah it was it was still And there's a lot of books written about it. There was a big lawsuit that he wrote ah he sort of stopped writing science fiction or scientific romances, as he called them.
00:32:22
Speaker
by, ah on a regular basis, by about 1901 or 1902. And I think the last couple ones that he did in that period, Food of the Gods and In the Days of the Comet, I can sort of leave alone, but the last one I really love is The First Man and the Moon, which i is also the basis for one of my favorite movies.
00:32:44
Speaker
But it's actually written by the guy who wrote the Kwaitemast or the screenplay by Nigel Neil. And he he wrote the Kwaitemast and actually the sort of public furor around a broadcast experience happened again in England around the Kwaitemast, first Kwaitemast stories in the 50s. It was the first science fiction program, I think it's 1952 or 54 on the BBC.
00:33:13
Speaker
Now, they ah people didn't think it was real, but they were captivated by this story. And sadly, only two of the episodes still exist. There were six, I believe. And and it's it's Bart Burnley good. The sciences get a bit funny. But there's sort of a Wells connection there. And I think a lot of British science fiction writers are still very heavily influenced by him. But the other thing is that there are many different incarnations of the War of the Worlds.
00:33:40
Speaker
ah You know, beyond the the Orson Welles one. 1978, Jeff Wayne comes out with the rock musical version of The War of the Worlds.
00:33:54
Speaker
which is live versions of that. I think you're still being performed. I think it's another English-wide performance. I hadn't heard of that. i've You've never heard of this? No. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. It's like Le Miserable, the musical but of H.G. Wells. Is there like a recordings of this CD? Yeah, it's all over the place. it's it was It was released as a concept album.
00:34:19
Speaker
i i I bought it in Wilco in Alberta. and And it's actually narrated. They couldn't get it to Orson Welles, so they got Richard Burton to do a narration.
00:34:34
Speaker
Wait a minute, when was this done? 1978. I'm looking it up as we're speaking, because it just blows my mind. Wow. That just blows my mind. In the 2000s, it was just a rock opera at the time. It wasn't on stage, but they finally took it to the stage in in the early 2000s, and they've been doing it on and off ever since.
00:34:58
Speaker
Gee, I would like to hear that. Now, okay. So you were saying, so that's a version, obviously there's been what, at least three film versions and one yeah television version. Yeah. Well, the other there is this, we're not done with audio experiences yet. I'm sorry. Oh, okay. in In the late sixties, one of the radio stations, Buffalo, New York, restaged it.
00:35:21
Speaker
what with sort of the Martians landing in the niagara the Niagara Peninsula around there, you know, and causing all kinds of trouble. And the Peace Bridge ah is destroyed. ah And it's very funny because part of the news bulletins, it's all done with the local ah radio cast staff from these these guys. Okay.
00:35:42
Speaker
and ah And my favorite part is actually when they go and interview some Mounties about the phenomena because they're getting anything over there. Have you seen anything over the other side of the bridge? know Oh, here's l a that is very hard to find. I finally found a copy and it's really good. They really need to know. It also and caused a panic of panic.
00:36:02
Speaker
Yes, it did. It did. Not nearly as widespread, but yes, it did. And there was another thing in the- Well, maybe using the actual newsmen and women to do the broadcast was a mistake then. Yeah, it kind of freaked the people out.
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah. that they in the same time At the same time, like was not the previous, you know, panic ah known to, you know, so what was the response? They're listening to this going, okay, it wasn't real last time, but it must be real this time. Well, I bet you the producers chose to do that because they wanted to make it seem more real. That's what I would do. I wouldn't use actors because, yeah.
00:36:40
Speaker
I think NPR did one of them, did a version of it on the radio. and But there was one more television version of a CBS program called Without Warning, which started with the same kind of a news bulletin, television news bulletin, not of Martians, but of aliens coming in.
00:36:59
Speaker
And it's actually quite chilling. it's very I think if you just look on YouTube or something, it might be there for people to look at. It ends with a joke. And I won't tell you what it is in case you watch it, but it's ah a little visual pun. But it's still even that, I'm still kind of unnerved by it. ah But yeah, you're right. There's three movies. ah There's the George Pell. And actually, Ray Harryhausen, back in the 40s, really did the some concept sketches for what he would have done with his dynamation effects. um you know like consumed but That would have been cool. Ray Harryhausen of Sinbad fame. Sinbad, yeah. And the first man in the moon, he did the selenites for that as well, my favorite version of it. and it's ah right But there's actually, if you go on on YouTube and look for Ray Harryhausen's first man on the moon,
00:37:53
Speaker
or rather, War of the Worlds. You can find ah a demo reel he made with his animation with the Martian. So crawling out of his is a tripod as he dies. From disease. From bacteria. Earth-borne disease. But it was but all I actually quite liked the George Powell version a lot. I was sad they didn't have the tripods. What did you think of the Spielberg version?
00:38:17
Speaker
I liked a lot of it except I hate Tom Cruise. i it's take What's wrong with Tom Cruise? I don't like him. He's a bad actor in my opinion. But that's yeah but also the character, you know, there's, there's something slight somewhat noble about the the the the protagonist narrator in the novel and in the story the other adaptations that, you know, they're either scientists or I think he's a journalist in the original novel. But they sort of represent progressive thought and scientific thought and
00:38:56
Speaker
And Tom Cruise plays a guy who run the crane, which is fine. I couldn't run a crane. And, you know, if you are in that sort of field of work, I just finished reading ducks. I have, I used to work in a telephone factory, so I've done my share a bit of blue collar stuff, but it's, it's, uh, but I just felt wrong. And, and they kept sort of trying to make us think it was just like 9-11. And I just, oh man, no, it's not. you know and I actually ah kind of enjoyed that version, except for the ending, which I understand Spielberg himself was disappointed in. cause I think there's aspects of the version I like. I mean, there's a lot about it I do like. You know, I mean, the Mart, the tripods are incredible. And, you know, those effects and and some of the the scene with
00:39:46
Speaker
Tim Robbins and know as the crazy guy in the basement That's a great scene. Actually, that's that's a great scene. I have lots of time for Tom Cruise He knows how to make a movie that's like you think so. I say I want to and Just today. In fact, I edited the podcast with Katherine Fitzsimmons and who is your publisher? Yeah and yes palestna and I mean like Tom Cruise I do like her a lot Why, she has- But does she do her own stunts? That's my question. That's right, yeah. It deals with us. That's right. Her writers, I'll tell you. Okay, that's gotta qualify. We've got all your books that have been published with BrainLag, right?
00:40:21
Speaker
So far, yeah, probably, I think they probably will be forever. yeah And in fact, your book, Extreme Dentistry, which we've already mentioned, was the first book published by Brainlag.

Hugh's Publishing and Radio Storytelling

00:40:31
Speaker
Yeah, that was ah their first book. And I discovered them as a function of Ad Astra, the science fiction convention. ah Believe it or not, my boss at the time was really interested in Chinese science fiction. And there was a panel on that Derwin Mack was doing.
00:40:49
Speaker
on Chinese science fiction. It was a really good panel, sort of well it was more of a presentation because it was just him. but So he went to that and I listened to that and he went off to do whatever bosses do at science fiction conventions. and I sat in on a panel of at Astra and it was different publishers talking about the end writers, talking about the differences between writing ah individual novels versus writing series of related novels. you know and And Catherine was on it and I never heard, I thought I knew everybody in the business and she gets quite new. and and And I thought, hey, maybe they'll, you know, because Extreme Dentistry has, it's a weird book. It's, you know, it's a mix. and I try to, at tables, I i'm try and say, well, Stephen King,
00:41:41
Speaker
And Douglas Adams had a had a passionate weekend. This book might be their baby.
00:41:51
Speaker
di comps Nice comps there. Yeah, and it was hard, but it was hard to get people to buy into that. And ah yeah, ah you know, and of course, I'd had some short stories in a few magazine, but i that's nothing really nobody knew that was but But I thought, well, here's somebody who looks enthusiastic and inexperienced. like Maybe she'll publish it. Maybe I could take advantage of her. Yeah, because you had submitted it to her. she was I guess she was open for submissions, and yours came over the transom. Yeah.
00:42:22
Speaker
And you mentioned Derwin Mack, who she just published their Brain Lags 50th book, which is Derwin Mack's book. Cool. Yeah. Mecha Jesus. and So 50 books later. Yeah. You know, I think Brain Lags a great company. And I think they, they punch above their weight, you know, for, and they do a lot of very, I mean, who I, when I, I remember sending her the collection of radio plays thinking, she's not going to buy this, you know, I'm going to get a nice letter back because who Earth is going to publish that. She did it. yeah we just And we actually had a great launch for it. we had ah
00:42:59
Speaker
We got a couple of voice actors, we we hired, and I did the narration, sort of the scene directions, and these this this couple did did the the other voices for the show. And so we did a few scenes from the scripts live for the edification of the of the yeah the those in attendance. and And that's a wonderful experience. Again, the one thing that I really like about radio, first of all, the fact that it engages the imagination could be immersive in ways that cinema just can't. I love cinema but yeah you just you can't help but you know you don't need to have to work at it it's just like reading a really vivid book and it also works in sort of the form the same way that storytelling works you know when you go and hear a really good storyteller you know I mean Stuart McLean understood this you know you just yeah listen to him talk you just hear him talk for hours but
00:43:53
Speaker
There's something about that the the experiences of voice in your ear and with no distractions. I think a lot of it comes back to when I was a kid, growing up, I was the youngest of six. The one thing that was constant in our family was the bedtime story. And my ah father has ah had a really good, he look if you want to know what he looks like,
00:44:21
Speaker
and He's a microbiologist, so there are... He pointed to himself. Thanks for pointing that out, Mark. But his voice was deeper and gruffery. is really yeah he could have done ah He could have done a War of the Worlds thing. and But he would read us a story every night from a story every night, and we went through all the classic kids' books.
00:44:43
Speaker
you know Robinson Crusoe, and Swiss Family Robinson, and Mark Twain books, and Alison Wonderland, and Winnie the Pooh. Oh gosh, I love Winnie the Pooh. And what he was best at were Rudyard Kipling's Just So stories. He even had all the voices. And we one of my sisters actually recorded him so that her kids could listen to him. Oh, wow. And he was really great. But I think one of the reasons I really like radio is that I'm so used to that and in youngest of six the
00:45:18
Speaker
audience for, his audience for the storytelling was slowly dwindling, you know, as they became teenagers and they had, well, it wasn't they weren't too cool, but they were just busy, you know, doing things in the evening they had to do and till it got to just me. And I was like 14 and I, and we sort of said, well, I guess we're kind of old for this, you know, but what we did, because it was, you can't cut that off cold turkey.
00:45:49
Speaker
no you going into with throne yeah the third thing we did is i would come and visit him he had to you love to slip there and lie there in his bed after work at the lab all day cloning me was so was so was listen to the radio. And it was either the CBC or the University FM. And we listened to, I believe it was CBC, although it could have been on the FM because they ran Goon Show. ah It was a BBC radio adaptation of John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids.
00:46:20
Speaker
Oh, that would have been terrific. it's Cool. yeah Yeah. Oh, I mean, i the the I don't have a lot of time. I don't know. The 60s movie is OK. I like the Australian TV show of an adaptation, but I. That one is so scary. It's just because you just you feel like the triphids are coming up the stairs into the room. you know ah The BBC, they know how to to make their radio plays. Now, a lot of that stuff is available online.
00:46:50
Speaker
ah Yeah, the BBC have they figured that out. They've made it available. Unlike the CBC, which are just having tons of trouble with the various ah unions getting everyone together in the same room to come up with an agreement to make all that available. What needs to happen is the federal government has to get together and do the same thing they did to the head of the supermarkets and say, you're coming to Ottawa and you're going to settle this, or we're going to do a mean thing to you. and I'm sure that's right up there in their top priority. It's not or that should see radio play is available because well the thing though is that The Brits produced about 50 hours of original radio radio drama a week, you know, or is it a month? Anyway, it's a hell of a lot
00:47:35
Speaker
And we produce maybe five a year hours of radio drama in Canada. I don't think they ah yeah they haven't actually done it for a while. But this is a whole other rabbit hole. We're not going to go down that. Well, know you the Stratford Festival and you ah in Ontario, I already said it. That's what I could remember. It's my neck of the woods.

Supporting the Podcast

00:47:59
Speaker
Yeah, well, they one year did a stage version.
00:48:03
Speaker
of the War of the Worlds. It was basically a stage dramatization of the radio play. That was pretty good. so so the the The story lives on. oh yeah and There's the c the radio there's ah a version that was filmed in Toronto on the for for cable television in the States. I used to love that because the Evil Martians used to live in the Canada Malting Building.
00:48:29
Speaker
was because it was so apparently very creepy.
00:48:34
Speaker
Marsha had returned. We were now covertly trying to take us over and they would take human forms. You never watched that, guys? I should have, i don't my friend Michael Lenick actually was the ah special effects of guru on that that show. They did some cool and go gro gross stuff on that show. And they had, it was it was pretty, in some ways it was kind of naff, I think, but I mean, these are all my personal opinions. And I won't even bother to defend them if people attack them, but it's, ah but okay but yeah.
00:49:05
Speaker
the yeah They did one episode. And again, again I don't want to spoil all the unlikely chance. to give it They did one. it was I think it was the season ender for the first season of that show. And it was just a freaking... First of all, I had a wonderful fight scene shot at the Cinesphere in Ontario Place. And yeah i that was one of the shows I loved because I could... They filmed a lot of it in our neighborhood. We just used to see a lot of watching the show. Which is always cool. These strange things happening.
00:49:37
Speaker
And now, least in the second season, they changed it. They got rid of a lot of their casts, and they moved it to alter the format, and it wasn't quite as fun. But the um I had to did enjoy the the current one that's on CBC Gem, even though they don't have Martian tripods either, and they're not Martians, or they weren't in the other series, and that annoys me. I feel that they need to be from Mars, because Mars there you go is one of the coolest planets.
00:50:03
Speaker
Hugh, we're going to wrap it up there. Oh, no. No, I have another nine hours of boring stories. I know. Yeah, but I always remind myself that I have to edit these. Yeah, you do have to edit these, Joe. I only have some time. Well, I look forward to the 15 minutes that survive. Oh, no, we'll be longer than that. No, that was gold. It recorded one hour and one minute and 17 seconds and probably one hour, one minute and 14 seconds will survive.
00:50:29
Speaker
Oh, that's okay. Well, let me know when it goes up. I'd love to hear and I'll tell all my friends. Absolutely. Hugh, it's been great talking to you. Thank you very much for being on our podcast with the Creator. Lovely to meet you. My pleasure.
00:51:06
Speaker
You've been listening to Recreative, a podcast about creativity and the works that inspire it. Recreative is produced by Mark Rainer and Joe Mahoney for Donovan Street Press, Inc., in association with Monkey Joy Press. Technical production of music by Joe Mahoney, web design by Mark Rainer. You can support this podcast by checking out our guest work, listening to their music, purchasing their books, watching their shows, and so on. You can find out more about each guest in all of our past episodes by visiting recreative.ca. That's re-creative.ca. You can contact us by emailing joe mohoney at donovanstreetpress.com. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening.