The Great Martian War: 1913–1917 (2013)

What an audacious, perfectly clever, and perfectly realized project.

Waves and waves of Martians!

The beast King Kong in RKO’s 1933 blockbuster film titled King Kong was termed “The Eighth Wonder of the World!” Well, move over King Kong, here comes The Great Martian War: 1913–1917. Frankly, this mock-umentary is like nothing I’ve ever seen. The utmost skill and craftsmanship have delivered this merging of faux archival-style (scratched, battered) footage (appearing as though from The Great War) with an endless CGI army of ruthless Titan alien machines. (Its sometimes needs mentioning that before World War II, the conflict we now call World War I was called The Great War, since in those early days, the thought that there would soon be a second war of global proportions, was not uppermost in most people’s minds.)

June 11, 2022. I am amending this blog site to include the Internet Archive site where, I only just discovered, the entire 2-hour movie can be watched.   https://archive.org/download/TheGreatMartianWar19131917.Mister.X 

😂

This impressive 2-hour TV movie produced by the BBC and the Canadian branch of The History Channel comprises three types of material flawlessly blended together: (1) actual archival footage from the period but not from battles, per se, (2) brand new footage of interviews, war scenes, and connecting and framing material, and (3) CGI of the invading machines. All the new footage that purports to be actually historical in nature is then aged appropriately ... but not all the same. Since the images of battle would have been shot at different times on different film stock in different cameras by different photographers and then likely stored in different places, the quality of these separate elements would necessarily be different.

 A three-minute YouTube collage.

The interviews of elderly survivors were supposed to have been filmed years apart, again implying that the film stock for each of the separate interviews would have aged differently. Plus all the numerous modern interviews with historians, museum curators, and the like needed to appear modern. Thus, after the CGI had been created and integrated with the live action material, all but the most modern sections of the film had to be aged, but each separate element needed to be aged differently—different degrees of blurriness, different dust particles, different scratches, different tears, different color balance, different hand-cranking styles, on and on, so that in the end what you have is absolutely ironic: super-scientific cutting-edge war machines appearing in century-old scratched news footage.

The Great Martian War 1913–1917 is a consummate TV mock-umentary created with unparalleled skill showing how the Martians were the real enemies during the era we think of as World War One. These photos were aged and blurred intentionally. 
Special photo juxtaposition by Thomas Kent Miller; copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

L. Ross Raszewski (blog.trenchcoatsoft.comblog.trenchcoatsoft.com) describes this clever counterfeit footage well:
 

“The interview footage is really convincing.... What sells it is the audiovisual texture.... Remember, this is purporting to be a documentary made a century after the fact ... so this is all archive footage dated from the ’60s to the ’90s. The sound is flat. The video is grainy—and it’s grainy in different ways. Interviews dated to the early ’80s have film grain, and those from the ’90s have VHS artifacts. Some of it is in 4:3. Other parts are widescreen but have that slightly-wrong look of having been cropped and enlarged. The colors are either oversaturated or faded depending on the vintage.”
.

The filmmakers made a point of never using actual battle footage from World War I out of respect for the all-too-real sacrifices made by so many during that terrible time. When necessary, they shot new war footage with actors. Also, they respected the real events and histories of historical personalities by having fiction and real life intersect when appropriate. For example, in both reality and in the film immense numbers of young men died in battle in vain due to the ineptitude or ignorance of their commanding officers; no-man’s land was all too real—in fact, on the first day of the Battle of Sommes, for example, more than 12,000 French and English soldiers perished, but nothing could be done to help the wounded who lay in the mud, shattered and moaning; by the end of the Battle of Sommes more than 1.2 million men on both sides had been killed; the film raises the death toll in the equivalent battle to three million. 

This is another YouTube mashup using music from Jeff Wayne's Musical 
Version of The War of the Worlds (see a previous posting).

And I haven’t even mentioned the story or plot or the quality of acting. As for the plot, there is no point paraphrasing the description that appears on The History Channel’s own website (www.history.co.uk/shows/the-great-martian-warwww.history.co.uk/shows/the-great-martian-war):

 

"Europe was on tenterhooks in the 2nd decade of the 20th century, everyone was expecting a Great War between the major European powers. But then, in 1913, something crashed into the forests of SW Germany. Troops were sent to investigate but were wiped out. Martian fighting machines began making their way across Western Europe and the countries of Europe combined forces to resist them. With aspects taken from 'The War of the Worlds' by H.G. Wells and from WWI itself, this dramatization presents a documentary style look at events as they unfolded and the effect they had of our world today."

The acting never seems like acting. The aged survivors and all those who were supposedly interviewed never seem to be anything but what they appear to be. The CGI Martian war machine designs (there are four distinct types) are all incredibly clever (staying true to Wells but with a steam-punk flavor), and their behavior and movements always look 100 percent authentic. Indeed, the entire film seems authentic, and to have pulled it off so satisfactorily reflects uncommonly well on The Great Martian War’s creative team.

 

An FYI:  Timothy Hines, of Pendragon Picture, in 2005 released a very-long-in-production straight-to-video War of the Worlds that was truer to the original novel in terms of time and location than anything to come before or since. For various reasons, Hines released four versions, cut mainly due to length issues. However, his last version was majorly different and was called

War of the Worlds: The True Story. It is a clever mock-umentary. Today is August 9, 2022. In a conversation a few weeks ago he said that he had taken his finished The True Story mock-umentary to The History Channel to raise interest. Nothing came of that, but later the History Channel released 1913-1917, which does have similarities.

 The Great Martian War 1913–1917 (2013 TV movie)

Canada/UK. Entertainment One Television, Impossible Pictures, The History Channel, BBC. C & B&W. 1.33:1 & 1.77:1. 120m.

CREW: Director Mike Slee. Script Steve Maher. Original Concept Steve Sarossy. Producer Mike Slee. Score Mark Korven. Director of Photography Christopher Romeike. Production Designer Andrew Berry. Casting Larissa Mair. Special Visual Effects Intelligent Creatures.

CAST: Narrator Mark Strong. Jock Donnelly Jock McLeod. Nerys Vaughan Joan Gregson. Hughie Logan Ian Downie. Duncan Mitchell-Myers Thomas Gough. Kim Lafonde Ashley Bomberry. Lawrence Hart Daniel Matmor. Alice Hale Hazel Douglas. Howard Klee Howard Jerome.

Formal Notice: All images, quotations, and video/audio clips used in this blog and in its individual posts are used either with permissions from the copyright holders or through exercise of the doctrine of Fair Use as described in U.S. copyright law, or are in the public domain. If any true copyright holder (whether person[s] or organization) wishes an image or quotation or clip to be removed from this blog and/or its individual posts, please send a note with a clear request and explanation to eely84232@mypacks.net and your request will be gladly complied with as quickly as practical.

Capricorn One (1978)

Peter Hyams should be ashamed!!!  He's a smart guy. Without a doubt he knew there would repercussions once this movie was released.  Why did he make it?  How COULD he make it?  Many people will go to their graves insisting that Apollo was a hoax. Hyams' movie only made that kind of thinking legitimate. I'm not interested in any of his other movies. CAPRICORN ONE was disgraceful and seriously affected people in a negative way. I repeat, he should have known that would happen, and he should have passed on the film. All these years later, the movement he help build is still making headlines (granted, this is from a year ago, but can anybody say it's likely anything changed?):
.

Millions Still Believe the 1969 Moon Landing Was a Hoax

By Ken Schwartz

July 20, 2019 07:07 AM

Despite the huge amount of evidence, the dust and rock samples, the television footage, and the hundreds of thousands of people who made it happen, polls show as many as 6% of Americans believe the Apollo 11 astronauts never landed on the moon.

Conspiracy theorists continue to insist the entire mission 50 years ago was an elaborate hoax, produced at the Area 51 Air Force testing range in Nevada or on a Hollywood movie soundstage by legendary director Stanley Kubrick.

The rumors first got traction just a year after the first moon landing, when the Vietnam War had led millions of Americans to question their government.

A July1970 poll found 30% of Americans declaring Apollo 11 to be a fake. That number remained relatively high throughout the '70s, when several books were published and a 1978 film about a phony mission to Mars, Capricorn One, convinced many that a moon landing was also a scripted piece of high-technology bunk.

NASA file image shows Neil Armstrong on the moon next to the Lunar Module Eagle

Buzz Aldrin, 2nd Man on Moon, Recalls 'Magnificent Desolation'

Art Harmon, a former legislative director for the U.S. House or Representatives, currently leads the Coalition to Save Manned Space Exploration.

He has two words for conspiracy theorists who say men never went to the moon – "absolute nuts."

"They’re just troublemakers. There's always people who will say 'this never happened' or 'that never happened.' They’re just trying to divide people. We went," he said.

But those who insist the U.S. did not put astronauts on the moon have claimed their own "evidence" to a faked landing.

The conceit of Peter Hyams’ Capricorn One is that in the near

future, NASA fakes a manned Mars landing by using

Hollywood’s tricks of the trade, sets and special effects.

They question why the flag astronaut Neil Armstrong planted on the moon could not possibly be rippling, because there is no air on the moon. In reality, the astronauts bent the metal frame holding the flag, causing the ripples.

** FILE ** In this July 20, 1969 file photo, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, the first men to land on the moon, plant the U.S. flag on the lunar surface. (NASA) Apollo 11's Astronauts Snapped Photos for Science.

The conspiracy minded claim photos the astronauts took on the moon do not show any stars in the background. In reality, the cameras were unable to capture the faint light emitted by stars,

If the moon landing was real, they ask, why didn't the lander scatter dust when it touched down? In reality, the lander was traveling horizontally much of the time and the thrusters that controlled its landing were not pointed down. Radiation from the sun also made the dust highly charged and it clung to the moon’s surface.

Every claim that no one went to the moon can be easily explained by science, physics or evidence brought back to Earth, Harmon said. He adds the conspiracy theories are "an insult to those 400,000 Americans who worked to get us to the moon and back."

Those hundreds of thousands of people, including scientists, engineers and factory workers, were scattered around the world.

One astronaut who actually walked on the moon in 1969 has no tolerance for those who call it a massive hoax.

When one conspiracy theorist challenged Buzz Aldrin and called him a liar, Aldrin punched him in the face.

 * * *

I had to think long and hard whether to include this movie in my book Mars in the Movies: A History. While it is ostensibly about the USA’s first flight to Mars, it is actually a flick about a government conspiracy run by the higher ups at NASA, a conspiracy that adds some Government-sanctioned murder into the mix for a little spice. Frankly I think such a notion is reprehensible. But in the end, I decided that there would be quite a few readers who would expect to find this movie in this sort of book, so I relented.

Summary. Before take off, it’s discovered that the first manned mission to Mars is in jeopardy because the landing capsule is flawed and the astronauts would not survive. This is not acceptable because public interest and government funding for NASA must not be lost, or else the U.S. space program would go belly up. A quick plan is designed and implemented, which would remove the astronauts from the flight just before the rocket takes off, hide them away for the allotted number of months, let them do video broadcasts from a simulated capsule and from a phony movie-set-style Mars surface tucked into a military warehouse, as necessary for verisimilitude. 

Once the return capsule returns, the astronauts would secretly be returned to their craft, and the world can have its tickertape parades. But there is one problem: the return capsule burns up on reentry. Well, you just can’t have three astronauts running around when they’re supposed to be dead. So NASA does everything it can to kill and dispose of the astronauts so they can be properly mourned by the world. A news reporter accidentally becomes aware of the plot, doggedly tracks down all the people and places involved in the scheme, saves one of the three astronauts, and breaks the story.

Peter Hyams is a director who frequently does his own cinematography. This is not at all usual and puts him squarely in the camp founded by the great William Cameron Menzies, who fought for industry-wide acceptance of the Production Designer and Director of Cinematography being recognized as essential to filmmaking as the Director. Capricorn One was his fourth Hollywood feature film; it was followed by, among many more in his 40-year career, Hanover Street (1979) with Harrison Ford, Outland (1981) with Sean Connery, The Star Chamber (1983) with Michael Douglas, 2o10 (1984) with Roy Scheider, The Presidio (1988) with Sean Connery, The Relic (1997) based on the best-selling novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child,  and End of Days (1999) with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and at least three pictures with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

A few of Peter Hyams' films.

Hyams’ body of work comprises mainly genre films of the science-fiction type, but also includes a number of straight dramas. Capricorn One was probably his first attempt at a real A-list movie, and his output thereafter mostly fell into this same league. He hit the jackpot when he headed up the film version of Arthur C. Clarke’s best-selling novel 2010, the first sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Clarke’s novelization of one of the all-time great science fiction films directed by Stanley Kubrick and co-written by Clarke and Kubrick.

Frankly I don't understand how Clarke could have, in conscience, agreed to allow Hyams to make 2010. One of Clarke's dearest friends was Wernher von Braun, who headed the Apollo Project. Clarke, too, had lived almost all his life promoting spaceflight. How could he sell the rights to 2010 to a man who probably did more to undermine the U.S space program than Richard Nixon—the man who had the power to cancel and mothball our space program . . .  and did!

Among the highlights of 2010's production design was the effort made to replicate various sets and props and the spaceship from the 1968 film. Since these no longer existed, they all needed to be remade using photographs from the first film.

Copyright 1984

However, in my view, Hyams’ choosing Roy Scheider to play the William Sylvester role (from 2001: A Space Odyssey) could not have been more ill-advised. In fact, the first sentence of Clarke’s first ever e-mail (Sept. 16, 1983) to Hyams, as recorded in The Odyssey File by Arthur C. Clarke and Peter Hyams, says, “William Sylvester (Dr. Floyd in ‘2001’) phoned recently from L.A. and talked at some length—but I’m not clear if he was after his old role or not (he said he was semi-retired). You might contact him.” One of the secrets of all good story telling is suspension of disbelief, yet Scheider’s presence never let me immerse myself in 2010, which took all the fun out of it for me. Yes, I am fully aware of the commercial and financial considerations that dictated using a star in the leading role, and Scheider was certainly a big star in those days. But my concern still stands; I could not and have not been able to enjoy the movie despite many attempts.  It seems to me that when a character from an earlier movie makes an appearance in a sequel using a different actor, some attempt must be made to correlate the two. To blatantly choose an actor whose presence on screen is the polar opposite of the original actor is a problem in my view. (The same unnecessary disconnect happened when Leonard Nimoy chose Robin Curtis to replace Kirstie Alley’s Saavik in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock; there simply had to be a more relatable choice.) But of course this could simply be chalked up as my foible.

From Clarke’s point-of-view, Hollywood’s being interested in 2010 must have been a highlight. Clarke was always one to be seduced by the glare of Hollywood. Many of his stories and novels were optioned over time, but none of them panned out except, of course, 2001, which just happened to be one of the most important movies ever made. Still, by ten years later, he had no better luck with movies than before 2001, so he probably leaped at the chance of having 2010 filmed. He must have enjoyed his fleeting cameo sitting on a park bench. Of course, in the days of pan-and-scan, thankfully pretty much extinct these days, he would have been chopped from the left side of the screen!

USA/UK. Sir Lew Grade, Associated General Films, Lazarus/Hyams Productions, Capricorn One Associates, Incorporated Television Company (ITC). C. 2.35:1. 123m

CREW: Director Peter Hyams. Script Peter Hyams. Producer Paul N. Lazarus III. Score Jerry Goldsmith. Director of Photography Bill Butler. Production Designer Albert Brenner. Editor James Mitchell. Casting Mike Fenton, Jane Feinberg. Special Visual Effects Van Der Veer Photo Effects.

CAST: Robert Caulfield Elliott Gould. Charles Brubaker James Brolin. Kay Brubaker Brenda Vaccaro. Peter Willis Sam Waterston. John Walker O.J. Simpson. Dr. James Kelloway Hal Holbrook. Judy Drinkwater Karen Black. Albain Telly Savalas.

Formal Notice: All images, quotations, and video/audio clips used in this blog and in its individual posts are used either with permissions from the copyright holders or through exercise of the doctrine of Fair Use as described in U.S. copyright law, or are in the public domain. If any true copyright holder (whether person[s] or organization) wishes an image or quotation or clip to be removed from this blog and/or its individual posts, please send a note with a clear request and explanation to eely84232@mypacks.net and your request will be gladly complied with as quickly as practical.

Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds (1978 Rock Opera LP)

A Martian machine from the New Generation tour.

Following Orson Welles’ October 1938 Mercury Theater on the Air broadcast, aside from the proliferating entertainments of print and film, H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds would not again engage the attention of much of the world in an utterly fresh manner until 1978—and this time it would be via music, an opera, indeed a rock opera—and it was created in the hot new medium of the day, a concept album.

Concept albums had been around for at least a decade, but they really hit their stride with The Who’s Tommy (1969) and the following year with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar and later with their Evita, among others. Younger people today who are familiar with the musical-play and film versions of these high-concept presentations frequently aren’t even aware that they began as phonograph records and that anything else was later derived from the records.

The 1978 2-disc LP rock-opera album Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds became immensely popular in the UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, but to this day has never caught on in the U.S. It’s narrated by Welsh actor Richard Burton in a deep sepulchral voice accompanied by an array of electronic instruments and a string orchestra.

Though I cannot speak for the rest of the world, I can describe my personal experiences. When the album was first released, I read a review by science fiction writer David Gerrold (and Star Trek contributor) in his then-regular column for Starlog magazine. Gerrold praised the album to the skies, and I was intrigued. Once I bought the album and listened to it, my life literally changed. Of course I’d listened to Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar, and they were well done professional recordings that were not only thought-provoking but great entertainment, as well ... but Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds transcended any of that; the album truly transported me.

In 2005, a 7-disc Collector’s Edition boxed set was released with two hybrid multi-channel SACD (Super Audio CD) discs, one extra-feature DVD, and 4 CDs of remixes. The 5.1 SACD mix is astonishing; five channels of precisely located sound plus one low-frequency channel put the listener in the middle of the Martian war. Personally I prefer to amp things up a bit by adding three speakers and three subwoofers, all in a 10 by 10 room, making my system effectively 8.4 rather than 5.1. The packaging is also wonderful, filled with detailed carefully rendered and printed paintings of the war machines and a comprehensive booklet. Sadly, the Sony-and-Phillips-Electronics-backed SACD audio format did not become popular as had been hoped and is used today mostly by the high-end audiophile community. While a 5.1 channel two-disc SACD of Jeff Wayne’s rock opera is still available through specialty outlets, the 7-disc Collector’s Edition is no longer in print.

The April 25, 2006, performance was videotaped at the Wembley Arena in London, England, and released on a Region 2 DVD. Luckily, the entire performance is on YouTube. It’s narrated by Welsh actor Richard Burton in a deep sepulchral voice accompanied by an array of electronic instruments and a string orchestra.

In 2006, the concept album made the transition to live stage in an elaborate production that included a 10-piece rock band, a 48-piece string orchestra, a full-size 35- foot-tall Martian war machine that spit red laser beams in every direction, and a ten- foot tall hologram-like virtual face of the late Richard Burton. It premiered on April 13, 2006, at the Bournmouth International Centre in Dorset, UK, which was the first show of a tour that sold out a dozen engagements throughout April in the UK, Ireland, and Wales. The April 25, 2006, performance was videotaped at the Wembley Arena in London, England, and released on a Region 2 DVD. I needed to buy a region-free DVD player to watch it, but it was well worth the extra effort and expenditure.

The 1978 2-disc LP rock-opera 16-page album liner notes.

In 2007, the tour included European venues and traveled down to Australia and New Zealand. There was even greater acclaim for the 2008 tour—and yet, except for some enthusiasts, few in the United States, had ever heard of Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds—in any medium. Certainly it would never tour the U.S.

So, in February 2009, I made up my mind that if the tour was not going to come to me, then I would go to the tour. In fact, my wife and I flew to Europe and attended a performance of the 30th Anniversary Tour in Ireland at the Dublin O2 on June 7, 2009— one of the greatest highlights of my life. There on stage was the ten-piece Black Smoke Band, the 48-piece ULLAdubULLA String Orchestra, Jeff Wayne himself, and the huge laser blasting three-story-tall Martian war machine ... very exciting.

 .
The 2013 tour dropped Richard Burton and added Liam Neeson, and a new album and video were recorded. This updated and recast version was called Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds: The New Generation and the live version was digitally recorded at London’s O2 Arena in 2013. This was released on a Region 2 DVD and also on Blu-Ray. The show’s final tour was in 2014, and then in February 2016 it settled into London’s Dominion Theater where it ran until April 30, 2016.

ALBUM CREDITS: Record Label CBS. Executive Producer Jeff Wayne. Music Composed, Orchestrated, Conducted, and Produced by Jeff Wayne. Script Doreen Wayne. Adapted from the H.G. Wells Classic The War of the Worlds. Dramatic and Narrative Section Directors Charles Dubin, Jeff Wayne. Lyrics Gary Osborne, Paul Vigrass, Jeff Wayne. Engineer Geoff Young. Singers Justin Hayward, Chris Thompson, Phil Lynott, Julie Covington, David Essex.

 

2006 VIDEO. UK. Universal Pictures, Double Jab Productions, Ollie Record Productions. C. 1.78:1. 1hr50m.

CREW: Director David Mallet. Script Jeff Wayne, Doreen Wayne. Adapted from the Novel by H.G. Wells. Producers Jeff Wayne, Damian Collier, Dave Crowe, Stuart Watts. Executive Producer Ray Jones. Music Composed, Arranged, Produced, and Conducted by Jeff Wayne. Lyrics Gary Osborne, Paul Vigrass, Jeff Wayne. Editors David Mallet, Nick Morris, Juliet Santini. Art Directors Lynn Debidineuse, Jonathan Park, John Pasche. Costume Designer Rachel Walsh. Special Effects Paul James. Special Visual Effects Craig Crane, Doug Fidler. Visual Effects Supervisor Paul James.

CAST: The Journalist Richard Burton. The Sung Thoughts of The Journalist Justin Hayward. The Artilleryman Alexis James. Parson Nathaniel Russell Watson. Beth, the Parson’s Wife Tara Blaise. String Orchestra ULLAdubULLA Strings. Band Black Smoke Band.

Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds: The New Generation.

2013 VIDEO. UK. Universal Pictures. C. 1.78:1. 1hr58m.

CREW: Director Nick Morris. Script Jeff Wayne, Doreen Wayne. Adapted from the Novel by H.G. Wells. Producer Dione Orrom. Executive Producers Helen Parker, Damian Collier, Jeff Wayne. Music Composed, Arranged, Produced, and Conducted by Jeff Wayne. Lyrics Gary Osborne, Paul Vigrass, Jeff Wayne.

CAST: The Journalist Liam Neeson. String Orchestra ULLAdubULLA Strings. Band Black Smoke Band. Marti Pellow, Ricky Wilson, Will Stapleton, Kerry Ellis.

Formal Notice: All images, quotations, and video/audio clips used in this blog and in its individual posts are used either with permissions from the copyright holders or through exercise of the doctrine of Fair Use as described in U.S. copyright law, or are in the public domain. If any true copyright holder (whether person[s] or organization) wishes an image or quotation or clip to be removed from this blog and/or its individual posts, please send a note with a clear request and explanation to eely84232@mypacks.net and your request will be gladly complied with as quickly as practical.

G

M

T

Y

Detect languageAfrikaansAlbanianAmharicArabicArmenianAzerbaijaniBasqueBelarusianBengaliBosnianBulgarianCatalanCebuanoChichewaChinese (Simplified)Chinese (Traditional)CorsicanCroatianCzechDanishDutchEnglishEsperantoEstonianFilipinoFinnishFrenchFrisianGalicianGeorgianGermanGreekGujaratiHaitian CreoleHausaHawaiianHebrewHindiHmongHungarianIcelandicIgboIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseJavaneseKannadaKazakhKhmerKoreanKurdishKyrgyzLaoLatinLatvianLithuanianLuxembourgishMacedonianMalagasyMalayMalayalamMalteseMaoriMarathiMongolianMyanmar (Burmese)NepaliNorwegianPashtoPersianPolishPortuguesePunjabiRomanianRussianSamoanScots GaelicSerbianSesothoShonaSindhiSinhalaSlovakSlovenianSomaliSpanishSundaneseSwahiliSwedishTajikTamilTeluguThaiTurkishUkrainianUrduUzbekVietnameseWelshXhosaYiddishYorubaZulu

AfrikaansAlbanianAmharicArabicArmenianAzerbaijaniBasqueBelarusianBengaliBosnianBulgarianCatalanCebuanoChichewaChinese (Simplified)Chinese (Traditional)CorsicanCroatianCzechDanishDutchEnglishEsperantoEstonianFilipinoFinnishFrenchFrisianGalicianGeorgianGermanGreekGujaratiHaitian CreoleHausaHawaiianHebrewHindiHmongHungarianIcelandicIgboIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseJavaneseKannadaKazakhKhmerKoreanKurdishKyrgyzLaoLatinLatvianLithuanianLuxembourgishMacedonianMalagasyMalayMalayalamMalteseMaoriMarathiMongolianMyanmar (Burmese)NepaliNorwegianPashtoPersianPolishPortuguesePunjabiRomanianRussianSamoanScots GaelicSerbianSesothoShonaSindhiSinhalaSlovakSlovenianSomaliSpanishSundaneseSwahiliSwedishTajikTamilTeluguThaiTurkishUkrainianUrduUzbekVietnameseWelshXhosaYiddishYorubaZulu

Text-to-speech function is limited to 200 characters

Options : History : Feedback : Donate

Close

About Thomas Kent Miller and Why I Wrote This Book

Thomas Kent Miller in London.

I’m Thomas Kent Miller, author of Mars in the Movies: A History from McFarland and Company publishers, and a number of other books and essays. From the age of eight I read science fiction and watched science fiction films, particularly Mars movies like The War of the Worlds (1953), Invaders from Mars (1953), and Conquest of Space (1955). 

Also see my long illustrated essay about exactly how I wrote and crafted Mars In the Movies, the book.

However, more importantly, I developed a lifelong fascination for the planet Mars, believing that it was important that people go there, as it seemed like an exciting place to explore. Mars became for me a sort of Holy Grail where I felt urgently that we, that is humans, must visit and explore. Of course there are any number of other more practical reasons to support such a program, but at heart I was mainly excited by the prospect of seeing and experiencing (vicariously to be sure) the sights the planet had to offer. Once my family moved from northern California to southern California in 1985 for unrelated reasons, I knew that by hook or by crook, sooner or later, I would be employed by  JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (La Canada Flintridge/Pasadena), probably the most visible NASA center both then and now. 

Well in February 1988 I in fact first sat down at my desk in the Documentation Section of JPL and began writing and editing a wide assortment of journal papers and presentations for the 3,000+ scientists and engineers who are the reason the lab exists. (Another 2,000 or so people supported them, from chefs to shuttle drivers to people like me). 

The reality is that the only Mars-related program I was involved with was Mars Observer…which simply “vanished,” that’s is, communications were lost irretrievably, as it approached the planet in 1993. Tough luck.  Of course, I was deeply disappointed, but the lab bounced and has had several stunningly successful Mars missions in subsequent years.

I very much enjoyed my seven years at JPL. In some ways: I felt liked I’d died and gone to heaven; I felt like I was going to work in Disneyland’s Tomorrowland realm each and every day for all that time; I never  tired of the atmosphere and ambiance and the thrill of discovery that was fundamental to JPL. I felt like I was getting the high school education that my real high school experience lacked. The downside was that the lab was 70 miles from my home and the commute eventually grew old. Another concern was southern California earthquakes. In 1992 the Landers quake was the worst in 40 years; in 1994, the Northridge quake was historically devastating. My son was in preschool at the time and I had great fears of what would happen if my wife was out of town and then a quake clogged the freeways worse than the beginning of the 4-day Thanksgiving holiday.

But then I was offered a dream job as editor-in-chief of the flagship technical trade magazine of an important computer software company, which also was much nearer my home, and I jumped at the chance, and eventually over twenty years grew the magazine's quarterly distribution from 75,000 to one million.  

But all along, though, I mourned the fact that my full-time job (requiring innumerable extra hours, which was always the case in my profession) prevented me from writing the book about Mars movies that I always daydreamed about. 

But eventually I retired and the first thing I did was write that book. In short, my lifelong fascination with Mars and Mars movies culminated in 2016 with the publication of the book Mars in the Movies: A History, which is the first cinematic reference book focused entirely on Mars movies, 100 films from 1910 to 2016, published by McFarland & Company.

I am thrilled that National Public Radio (NPR) KPCC 83.9 interviewed me on air about the book, You can hear the whole interview here: https://marsinthemoviesahistory.blogspot.com/2017/04/kpcc-839-airtalks-friday-filmweek-npr.html

Formal Notice: All images, quotations, and video/audio clips used in this blog and in its individual posts are used either with permissions from the copyright holders or through exercise of the doctrine of Fair Use as described in U.S. copyright law, or are in the public domain. If any true copyright holder (whether person[s] or organization) wishes an image or quotation or clip to be removed from this blog and/or its individual posts, please send a note with a clear request and explanation to eely84232@mypacks.net and your request will be gladly complied with as quickly as practical.