Sunday 15 April 2012

war of the worlds


And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the 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 one 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 machinery on a tripod stand.


H. G. Wells (1898)

3 comments:

Martyn Cornell said...

Indeed.

Dave Leeke said...

Excellent, thank you for that Martyn. I will read on some more - I checked the next one which seemed appropriate about school both then and now!

Martyn Cornell said...

xkcd is excellent, though you probably have to be as least slightly into techie nerdery to appreciate a lot of it. Did you spot the hiden mouse-over joke? There's one on every cartoon ...