http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/war of the worlds http://io9.com/tag/war of the worlds

We really liked The Adventures of Tintin, but we've heard lots of people saying it's not Steven Spielberg's best movie. And this started us wondering: What was Spielberg's last truly great genre film? Was it Tintin? Minority Report? God forbid, was it Indiana Jones 4? Now's your chance to vote! More »
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Tom Cruise is coming back! He's starring in a fourth Mission Impossible movie this weekend, and he's also set to star in two upcoming science fiction films: Joseph Kosinski's Horizons and the movie version of the Japanese alien-fighting novel All You Need Is Kill. More »
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Watch Liam Neeson make his big holographic debut, as the new narrator for the The War of the Worlds musical, replacing the voice of Richard Burton. The show, based on the HG Wells classic, is getting a total technological overhaul — including a 100-foot wide CG animation wall, a hologram of Lian Neeson playing the role of journalist George Herbert (who will also be able to interact with the audience) and a Martian fighting machine that blasts fireballs at the audience. Watch the Liam Neeson hologram in action now! More »
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Steven Spielberg's new show Falling Skies launched last night on TNT, and the good news is, it got gangbuster ratings for a basic cable show: 5.9 million viewers, more than The Walking Dead's first episode on AMC. More »
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A good opening credit sequence can be more memorable than the TV program it introduces. Luckily, science fiction shows are rife with sleek, quirky, and flat-out bizarre show intros. Here are over 30 of the best. More »
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Like the undead, these zombie novel mashups are hard to kill. Next up is The War of the Worlds Plus Blood Guts and Zombies, in which both alien invaders and humankind are forced to fight off the undead. More »
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Every great disaster movie has some moments of pure, epic destruction, where everything collapses, burns or blows up real good. Bonus points for destroyed landmarks and victim cameos. Here are 30 amazing money shots from the greatest disaster porn flicks. More »
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Science fiction's greatest authors have brilliant ideas, storytelling mojo... and plenty of stubbornness. Many of the field's greatest writers were buried in rejection slips, before they finally broke in. Here are 15 classic novels that publishers didn't want to touch. More »
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Due to their position in the Gliese system, hypothetical creatures on planet Zarmina might not be alone in their own solar system, the way humans seem to be. And those neighbors could reach Zarmina pretty quickly. More »
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Concept artist James Clyne began working in video games and then turned his sights towards designing films like Avatar, Transformers, Star Trek, and War of the Worlds. Clyne filled io9 in on his favorite designs and projects. More »
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The best concept art tells a story, all by itself. But what's the difference between creating concept art for movies, versus drawing comics or illustrating books? We asked some of our favorite concept artists, and here's what they said. More »
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Alien fleets, rayguns and...Winston Churchill? Sure, we haven't met any aliens yet in our timeline (or they're being very discreet about close encounters), but alternate history authors won't let that stop them. First contact isn't just for the future anymore! More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5514498&view=rss&microfeed=true To celebrate Penguin Books' 75th anniversary, the London Times asked writers to name their favorite Penguin book. Novelist Will Self writes an eloquent tribute to The War Of The Worlds as the ultimate modern book, proof that we can still create enduring myths in the modern era, and a token of H.G. Wells' genius in crafting a new type of invasion narrative. Writes Self: More »
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It's the week where children hope for bearded intruders bearing sacks, and millions also a week where television gets a bit... lazy. Don't say you weren't warned. Luckily, there's new Doctor Who to make everything better. More »
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Hoping to spark their students' imaginations, a junior school in England staged an alien invasion, complete with a crash landing and the "abduction" of one of their faculty members while the children watched. What could possibly go wrong? More »
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Any movie that starts with Morgan Freeman's cask-aged voice, telling us we're screwed, is off to a great start. Many science-fiction movies open with voiceovers, which prepare you for greatness... or bombard you with backstory. Here are 50 of our favorites. More »
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Humanity has been at war with Mars for over 100 years! HG Wells' War of The Worlds has stayed in print since its debut, and that means more than a century of awesome cover artwork. More »
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In this album art from Jeff Wayne's musical version of War of the Worlds, artist Geoff Taylor has recast the menacing tripods as robots who look like giant, horrifying iPods ravaging the Earth. More »
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Residents of Zagreb panicked last week when they heard radio reports of UFO sighting. The station’s journalists admitted to a War of the Worlds-inspired hoax, but claim this hoax held a deeper purpose. More »
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If there's one thing that science fiction has taught us, it's that it's almost a certainty that Earth will be invaded by an alien force at some point in our lifetime. Luckily, we've also learned that humanity will most likely forget our differences, pull together and defeat said alien force through unity, the resourcefulness of an under-appreciated member of society and potentially the common cold, but that doesn't change the fact that - as GI Joe would tell us - knowing is half the battle. So we present to you a guide to the different types of alien invasion, so that you can know whether to join the fight or betray us all to your potential new alien overlords. More »
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This short, silent clip of Ray Harryhausen's stop-action Martian emerging from its crashed spaceship (a 1940s study for an unmade War of the Worlds) cries out for some Don Martin/Mad magazine-esque onomatopoeia - but all I've got is a SCHLOOMP and a couple of SPLATS. I know you can do better. More »
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One of the most widely-read science fiction novels across the globe, H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds has been in print continuously since the late nineteenth century. And it's had a lot of book covers: artistic, fancy, pulpy, and just plain strange. Now, over at Chez Zeus, there's a collection of over 100 (and growing) covers from the book that readers have sent in. You can browse them by date, artist, language, and image on the cover. By far my favorite collection of of the covers is grouped under the header "Huh?" See a few below. More »
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The greatest alien visitors in science fiction are totally invulnerable — except for one crucial weakness. And the best almost-unstoppable aliens have a weakness that is more poetic than Sylvia Plath and William Blake put together. Just look at our video compilation of aliens encountering their most poetic Achilles heels, and then check out our complete round-up. More »
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The awesome thing about science fiction is that anything can happen — including the occasional incredibly convenient miracle. Sometimes circumstances become so desperate and dire in a science fiction tale that even the "reset button" can't fix them — and that's when the "deus ex machina" shows up. The term, meaning "God from a machine," comes from classical theater, where a wheel-and-pulley deity would literally show up to sort everything out. And in science fiction, god literally can come out of a machine. Bow your head before our taxonomy of the most unlikely miracles in scifi history. More »
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Even if you just hear a science fiction movie or TV show playing in another room, you'll instantly recognize it thanks to the weird sounds of alien spaceships and laser weapons. No genre of entertainment has ever challenged sound-effects designers as much as SF. We've gone through some of scifi's most identifiable and iconic sounds and boiled them down into a list of the coolest and the most earwormy. More »
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Everyone knows about Orson Welles' famous 1938 radio version of War Of The Worlds, which panicked the nation by (accidentally?) convincing those who tuned in late that New Jersey had been invaded by Martians. But how many of you knew that the same hoax succeeded two other times - and in one case, resulted in riots, the destruction of the radio station who'd broadcast the show, and a death toll between 6 and 20 people? Those stories, as well as the reason why so many people fell for Welles' original broadcast, are at the heart of a special episode of WNYC's awesome Radio Lab. More »
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There are two ways of taking a science fiction classic and bringing it to the screen: You can bring it up to date, setting it in the present day and revamping the characters accordingly, like Steven Spielberg's War Of The Worlds. Or you can set it in the era when it was written, and painstakingly recreate the time and place that gave birth to it, like Zack Snyder's Watchmen movie. Which route do you think works better for movies of classic novels? More »
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As Chancellor Gorkon from Star Trek VI would say, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon." We'd reply by telling him that unless he'd seen Star Wars in the original Russian folk art version, he was a pansy. Russian artist Andrey Kuznetsov has created some pretty impressive versions of films like The Matrix, The Terminator (or maybe that's T2: Judgement Day), Star Wars, Spider-Man, War of the Worlds, and others using the traditional style of Russian folk art. We've been able to decipher most of them from the original page, but we can't figure out for the life of us what this piece is supposed to represent with the guy using a computer and sticking a knife (or is that a USB drive?) in his butt. War Games: The Porno? Let us know what you think it is in the comments, after you check out the gallery below. More »
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If only Spielberg's War Of The Worlds movie had looked as cool as this painted concept art, we'd still be rewatching it. The concept art is often grander and bigger than what ends up on the screen — even for movies we love — because of real-world constraints. Click through for a gallery of the greatest concept art from Serenity, Hitchhiker's Guide and Alien vs. Predator, mostly because it's Friday. More »
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It's Wednesday! Also known as New Comics Day. If you're not up for the weekly trek to pick up the latest issues, but you've been wanting to jump in on this whole comic book thing, we'll get you set up with some freebie comic books for your downloading pleasure, in an effort to further decrease your work productivity. Find out where to get the goods, including women-rule-the-world apocalypse tale Y the Last Man and super anti-hero series Doom Patrol. More »
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A lot of sci fi concept art has a tendency to be spiky and sharp looking, and you'll usually see enough spires and knife-edged towers to populate an entire world with if you flip through a book of book of alien artwork. That's why artist Ryan Church's floating paddleboat here looks serene and peaceful. You could just imagine spreading a blanket under that tree and taking a nap while these leviathans glide by overhead. Could someone out there get a Huckleberry Finn in Space project started ASAP? More »
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Must-read graphic novels are futuristic classics that shouldn't be missed. Of course, not every must-see is perfect. That's why we've rated them 1-5 on the patented "crunchy goodness" scale. More »
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