Leider durfte man -hieß es-
die Ausserdischen nicht zeigen, was sicher interessant wäre.
Der Roman hilft ein wenig weiter:
"A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.
Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass that framed them, the had of the thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. the whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air."
Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearances. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth-above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes-were at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. There was something fungoid in the oil brown skin, something in the clumsy deliberation, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and dread.
„They were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible to conceive. They were huge round bodies-or, rather, heads-about four feet in diameter, each bogy having in front of it a face. This face had no nostrils-indeed, the Martians do not seem to have had any sense of smell, but it had a pair of very large dark-coloured eyes, and just beneath this a kind of fleshy beak. In the back of this head of body-I scarcely know to speak of it-was the single tight tympanic surface, since known to be anatomically an ear, though it must have been almost useless in our dense air. In a group round the mouth were sixteen slender, almost whiplike tentacles, arranged in two bunches of eight each. These bunches have since been named rather aptly, by that distinguished anatomist, Professor Howes, the hands.“
"The internal anatomy, I may remark here, as dissection has since shown, was almost equally simply. The greater part of the structure was the brain, sending enormous nerves to the eyes, ear, and tactile tentacles. Besides this were the bulky lungs, into which the mouth opened, and the heart and its vessels. The pulmonary distress caused by the denser atmosphere and greater gravitational attraction was only too evident in the conclusive movements of outer skin.
And this was the sum of the Martians organs. Strange as it may seem to a human being, all the complex apparatus of digestion, which makes up the bulk of our bodies, did not exist in Martians. They were heads-merely heads. Entrails they had none. They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures, and injected it into their own veins. I have myself seen this being done, as I shall mention in its place. But, squeamish as I may seem, I cannot bring myself to describe what I could not endure even to continue watching. Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from still living animal, in most cases from a human being, was run directly by means of a little pipette into the recipient canal. . . ."
Nun habe ich irgendwo in einem Bericht über die Film-Premiere
so ne 3-beinige riesige Maschine vorm Kino stehen sehen. Tas
Teil hat mich an eine Sci-Fi Serie erinnert die ich als
kleiner Junge immer gesehen hab, „Die 3-beinigen Herscher“
glaub ich. Fand ich gut. Hat Spielberg abgekupfert??
Ja, vom Roman:
„And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over in way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground? That was the impression those instant flashes gave. But instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of a machinery on a tripod stand.“
"Its motion was so swift, complex and perfect that at first I did not see it as a machine, in spite of its metallic glitter. the fighting-machines were coordinated and animated to an extraordinary pitch, but nothing to compare with this. People who have never seen these structures, and have only the ill-imagined efforts of artists or the imperfect descriptions of such eye-witnesses as myself to go upon, scarcely realise that living quality.
I recall particularly the illustration of one of the first pamphlets to give a consecutive account of the war. The artist had evidently made a hasty study of one of the fighting-machines, and there his knowledge ended. He presented them as tilted, stiff tripods, without either flexibility or subtlety, and with an altogether misleading monotony of effect. The pamphlet containing these renderings had a considerable vogue, and I mention them here simply to warn the reader against the impression they may have created. there were no more like the Martians I saw in action than a Dutch doll is like a human being. To my mind, the pamphlet would have been better without them."