Computer Animation Arts

H.G. Wells' science-fiction alien invasion classic The War Of The Worlds  (1898) has been continuously in print for over 100 years. Many of you will be familiar with Wells' basic premise because of the 2005 Spielberg adaptation , with its often chilling 9/11 imagery and channelling of that terrorist attack's trauma.  The 1953 film version , which deservedly won an Oscar for its special effects, dispensed with Wells' iconic image of the martians' tripod fighting machines, substituting green-tipped, cobra-head manta-rays instead and throwing in an atomic bomb.  For me, however, Wells' vision of our wholesale destruction at the hands (or should that be tentacles?) of alien invaders was first impressed upon me by Jeff Wayne's 1978 concept album, featuring the vocal talents of Richard Burton .  If you've never listened to it - you should.  It can still raise a few goosebumps even now. Wells describes the martian invaders' fighting machines thus: ...