Fighting machine (The War of the Worlds)
The fighting machine is one of the fictional machines used by the Martians in H. G. Wells' 1898 Golden [Age of Science Fiction|classic science fiction] novel The War of the Worlds. In the novel, it is a fast-moving three-legged walker reported to be tall with multiple, whip-like tentacles used for grasping, and two lethal weapons: a heat-ray and a gun-like tube used for discharging canisters of a poisonous chemical black smoke. It is the primary machine the Martians use when they invade Earth, along with the handling machine, the flying machine, and the embankment machine.
Description in the Novel
The fighting machines are described as having three tall, articulated legs which spurt green gas from their joints, with a grouping of long, whip-like metallic tentacles hanging beneath the silver central body, atop the main body a brass coloured hood-like head houses a sole Martian operator.. The wheel is apparently unknown to the Martians, who use electromagnetic artificial muscles instead. In chapter 10, Wells' narrator first describes the appearance and movement of the machines;In the novel, the armaments of the fighting machines include a directed-energy incendiary weapon fired from a camera-shaped device held by an articulated arm. They also had gun-like tubes which could deploy a poisonous gas. The fighting machines could also discharge steam through nozzles that dissipates the black smoke, which then settles as an inert, powdery substance.
The metallic tentacles, which hang below the main fighting machine body, are used as probes and for grasping objects. The novel is indeterminate regarding the height of the fighting machines; as in the novel, a newspaper article describes them to be more than tall. HMS Thunder Child, a Royal Navy torpedo ram, engages a trio of tripods that are pursuing a refugee flotilla heading to France from the southeast English coast; the Thunder Child is eventually destroyed by the Martian heat-ray, but not before taking out two fighting machines.
The original conceptual drawings for the fighting machines, drawn by Warwick Goble, accompanied the initial appearance of The War of the Worlds in Pearson's Magazine in 1897. Wells criticized the illustrations, writing in later editions of the story:
Adaptations
''Ray Harryhausen's unmade film''
In the artwork for Ray Harryhausen's unmade 1950s War of the Worlds movie, the fighting machines are based on flying saucers walking upon three legs with spiked feet, and fire their heat rays from the rims of their bodies.''The War of the Worlds (1953 film)''
The Martian fighting machines, designed by Albert Nozaki for George Pal's 1953 Paramount film The War of the Worlds, barely resemble the same machines in the H. G. Wells novel. The novel's fighting machines are 10-story tall tripods and carry the heat-ray projector on an articulated arm connected to the front of the machine's main body, as well as possessing the poison black smoke canisters fired from gun-like tubes. In the film version, the war machines instead possess two different types of death ray weapons, the first having pulsing wingtip ray emitters that cause subatomic disintegration to whatever they shoot, while the second type of death ray each Martian machine uses is a visible, reddish heat-ray, atop a swiveling goose-neck, mounted in a cobra-like head. The film's war machines move about on three invisible legs of energy, which are only briefly visible when moving on the ground upon leaving their initial landing site.Television series
The serialized War of the Worlds television series was established as a sequel to the 1953 film with much of the alien technology in the first season cued with visual references to the design of those in the aforementioned film. An older model of the 1953 film's craft is shown to have physical legs more similar to the novel version.''War of the Worlds''
There are several differences between the fighting machines as described in Wells' novel and those in Steven Spielberg's 2005 film, which come from an undisclosed alien world. In this version the tripods were long ago brought to Earth, having been buried underground sometime in the past. The aliens instead travel in capsules to their buried machines, which transport them underground to the Tripods. The fighting machines in this movie also have the roles of the Martian handling machines with the fighting machines capturing humans and placing them into two containers where they are harvested one-by-one. Rather than burning humans, the fighting machines' weapons can disintegrate humans into ash leaving their clothing intact. In a published interview screenwriter David Koepp stated his belief that they were planted by these extraterrestrials as a part of some kind of alien "contingency plan".While the Tripods don't arrive to Earth in cylinders, before they emerge, the ground cracks and then rotates in a similar fashion to the cylinder's lid from the novel.