Bombs Away and Smash Hits at Home
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many cultural imbrications; for example, Cantril indicates that the program merely touched
off a volatile mountain of fear and anxiety building up within Americans on the brink of a
second world war. Thus the Martians figured, not Russians as they do in this postwar
version, but Nazis and Japanese. Meanwhile, Lowentrout cites “the Angst of
Secularization” as the cause of panic; he argues that rapidly developing technology
(including the phenomenon of Welles’s own ultra-realistic broadcast) and the suggestion
throughout the narrative that “all was lost” resonated with Americans’ deepening fear of a
loss of God, triggering hysteria.
7. On the generational relationship between horror and sci-fi, see Lucanio 2-3 and Michel
Laclos (quoted in Sobchack 28-29). On their oppositional relationship, see Stuart
Kaminsky (quoted in Lucanio 5) and Sobchack. On the alien invasion film as subset of
sci-fi, see Lucanio. See also Iaccino.
8. Wells himself was fairly blithe in combining these elements; his Martians have in fact
come to earth to gain sustenance from human blood.
9. Curiously, Hardy includes in his description of Plan Preference to “its predictable plot
of aliens trying to conquer Earth '