War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches

War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches is a 1996 Bantam Spectra science fiction anthology, edited by Kevin J. Anderson. It is a tribute to H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds; each story envisions a famous individual's reactions to the Martian invasion and the impact of the invasion on a different part of the world.

Several of the stories tie into other works of fiction; Anderson would also later go on to write The Martian War, a novel that also presented Wells' Martian invasion from the viewpoints of Wells and several other fictional and historical characters.

Table of contents

Title	Persona	Author	Notes	Location invaded	Alternate history afterward
Forward	H. G. Wells	Kevin J. Anderson	-	-
The Roosevelt Dispatches	Teddy Roosevelt	Mike Resnick	Also included in The Other Teddy Roosevelts; in this story, Martians are powerful and nearly invulnerable in their own bodies, even without a Fighting Machine	Cuba (only minor Martian presence)
Canals in the Sand	Percival Lowell	Kevin J. Anderson	Was expanded to serve as the prologue of The Martian War	North Africa
Foreign Devils	Guangxu Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi	Walter Jon Williams	Won the 1996 Sidewise Award for Alternate History (Short Form) ; conflict in story is as much between various Chinese political and military factions as Humans vs. Martians	China	China uses disarray of European powers to shake off colonial tutlelage and become world power 50 years ahead of schedule, remains a monarchy under the reform-minded Guangxu Emperor; no Chinese Republic.
Blue Period	Pablo Picasso	Daniel Marcus	-	Paris, France	The young Picasso paints Martians, his later artistic style substantially influenced
The Martian Invasion Journals of Henry James	Henry James	Robert Silverberg	-	England (same invasion as in original Wells book, from a different viewpoint)	Henry James becomes author of "The War of the Worlds", later style and literary career substantially affected
The True Tale of the Final Battle of Umslopogaas the Zulu	Winston Churchill and H. Rider Haggard	Janet Berliner	Umslopogaas was the fictional companion of Allan Quatermain in Haggard's novels	South Africa during the Boer War (only minor Martian presence)
Night of the Cooters	The Texas Rangers	Howard Waldrop	Texas is the only location on Earth where humans are shown succeeding in nipping in the bud the Martian invasion of their area - due especially to a plucky and highly resourceful middle aged officer. (Originally printed in Omni in 1987)	Texas
Determinism and the Martian War, with Relativistic Corrections	Albert Einstein	Doug Beason	-	Italy
Soldier of the Queen	Rudyard Kipling and Mohandas K. Gandhi	Barbara Hambly	-	India	Gandhi makes India independent 50 years ahead of schedule, Kipling becomes resigned to the end of the British Empire
Mars: The Home Front	Edgar Rice Burroughs	George Alec Effinger	John Carter helps the Barsoomians fight Wells' Martians, who in this depiction are only one of many races on Mars[1]	Barsoomian city of Helium (a raid only)
A Letter from St. Louis	Joseph Pulitzer	Allen Steele	-	St. Louis (reference to the destruction of New York)	Pulitzer killed by Martians before having had a chance to endow the Pulitzer Prize
Resurrection	Leo Tolstoy and Joseph Stalin	Mark W. Tiedemann	-	Russia	After reconstruction from Martian ravages, in which Tolstoy has key role, Russia becomes a stable Constitutional Monarchy; no October Revolution, Stalin an obscure revolutionary; Tolstoy's final work, Resurrection, is never published
Paris Conquers All	Jules Verne	Gregory Benford and David Brin	In this story, Martians are divided into males and females, directly contradicting data in original Wells book but vital for plotline here	Paris, France (substantially different from Daniel Marcus' account for the same city)
To Mars and Providence	H. P. Lovecraft	Don Webb	Equates the Martians with Lovecraft's Elder Things[2]	Providence, Rhode Island (references landings in London, Paris, St. Louis, and Texas)
Roughing it During the Martian Invasion	Mark Twain	Daniel Keys Moran and Jodi Moran	-	New Orleans (brief depiction of a naval battle off New York)
To See the World End	Joseph Conrad	M. Shayne Bell	-	"Congo Free State"	The Martian invasion causes the people of the world to finally unite as one, and a central government, The Council of Earth, is created.
After a Lean Winter	Jack London	Dave Wolverton	The only story to give a brief glimpse of the Martians' own point of view (in this story, they are telepathic and can, if they want, communicate with humans) and it shows that they, too, think of themselves as The Good Guys	Alaska	Due apparently to cold weather, Martians persist in Alaska after dying in the rest of the world - the story gives no hint if and when they were finally gotten rid of. As a result, London remains stuck in Alaska among trappers grimly struggling to survive under the Martians, and no indication if and when he went back to California and took up his literary career.
The Soul Selects her own Society: Invasion and Repulsion: A Chronological Reinterpretation of Two of Emily Dickinson's Poems: A Wellsian Perspective	Emily Dickinson	Connie Willis	This essay, purporting to find hints of a Martian invasion in Dickinson's poetry, seems mainly a satire on over-elaborate literary criticism; won the 1997 Hugo Award for Best Short Story	Amherst, Massachusetts
Afterward: Retrospective	Jules Verne	Gregory Benford and David Brin	Set in 1928, and recounts how the technology and lessons learned from the Martians have changed the world for the better, and how the humans are launching a counter-invasion of Mars[3]

References

1. This premise was also used in Rainbow Mars and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II. Also, in this story, Dejah Thoris is abducted by minions of Wells's Martians; Jess Nevins's League annotations suggest that author Alan Moore referenced this with Dejah's implied 'troubling occurrence' and absence.
2. In Lovecraft's work and mentioned in this story, the Elder Things/Martians arrived on Earth millions of years ago and built a city in Antarctica before being wiped out. In the back cover of Global Dispatches, several tripods are shown to be apparently excavating something in a frozen landscape. This could be a reference to the Martians searching for their long-lost brethren.
3. The world described, and the benefits gained from Martian technology, is similar to the world depicted in Scarlet Traces

External links

• Article in Steven Silver's Reviews