"Manly Wade Wellman - Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wellman Manly Wade)

Sherlock Holmes's
War of the Worlds
by Manly W. Wellman and Wade Wellman



A Warner Communications Company

TWO AUTHORS' NOTES


In the summer of 1968 I was fortunate enough to see A Study in Terror, a splendid movie involving
Sherlock Holmes pitted against Jack the Ripper in London around 1890. This is the only film I have ever
seen in which the magnificent speed of Holmes's think-ing is brought to life with full effect. So effective
was the portrayal of Holmes that, as I saw the film for the first time, I suddenly began to ask
myselfтАФwondering, indeed, why I had never thought of it beforeтАФhow Holmes might have reacted to
H. G. Wells's Martian invasion. I determined to write a story on this subject and, since I am primarily a
poet, felt obliged to ask for assistance. My father agreed to collaborate, sug-gesting that another Doyle
character, Professor Chal-lenger, be included. Our collaboration, "The Adventure of the Martian Client,"
was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for December, 1969.
I then felt that more could be done with the idea and suggested a sequel. Our second story,
"Venus, Mars, and Baker Street," appeared in the same maga-zine for March, 1972. After it
appeared, I decided that the account of Holmes's activities in the first ten days of the invasion was far
too brief, and that a third story, a sort of inverted sequel, must also be written. By the time this was
purchased, we determined to turn the saga into a book, which we now offer to the public, with
some additions and revisions.
Incidentally, it seems evident that Wells's The War of the Worlds was to some extent influenced by
Guy de Maupassant's "The Horla," although the influence has never, to my knowledge, been observed
by a critic. Readers of this saga should take notice of an excellent moving picture, loosely based upon de
Maupassant's tale, Diary of a Madman. The bad title has damaged the film's reputation, but the
title character, superbly played by Vincent Price, is a man who outwits and destroys a superior being
in a fashion well worthy of Holmes. Two motion pictures, then, have played their parts in the various
inspirations for these five tales.
I dedicate my part of the saga to my friend Bob Myers, in warm appreciation of the courage,
resolution, compassion, and humor which are so nobly outstanding in his character and personality.
Wade Wellman,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin



My partner in this enterprise says he found inspira-tion while pondering two motion pictures, which I
have not seen and cannot judge. But he vividly imagined Sherlock Holmes in The War of the Worlds for
both of us. We have seen publication of our short stories about it, and we feel that the whole story was
not told. Here is the effort to tell it.
Wells's novel was serialized in Pearson's Magazine, AprilтАФDecember, 1897, and published as a
book in London and New York the following January. But Wells spoke from a time in the then
future, dating the invasion as "six years ago." My partner, a better astrologer than I, pointed
out that the only logical year of the disaster was 1902, in June of which year Mars came properly
close to earth; which supplies for us the necessary dates for the other corridor of time in which
these things happen, including Wells's viewpoint as of 1908 and publication presumably late that year or