Labels: text | screenshot OCR: ARTISTS DREAM OF MARS H.G. WELLS CINEMA & MUSIC Undoubtedly, Wells's description owes much to the theory of evolution. He imaginatively depicts the Martians as the humans of the future, for as he says, citing a "foolish and facetious" 19th-century caricature: " ... the perfection of mechanical appliances must ultimately supersede limbs; the perfection of chemical devices, digestion; that such organs as hair, external nose, teeth, ears, and chin were no longer essential parts of the human being, and that the tendency of natural selection would lie in the direction of their steady diminution ... The brain alone remained a cardinal necessity." In short, "in the Martians we have ... the actual accomplishment of such a suppression of the animal side of the organism by the intelligence." It should be remembered, too, that Wells lived at the end of Queen Victoria's reign, when the body and its functions were scorned. But to return to our narrator ... he is imprisoned for two weeks beneath the debris of the house before he at last manages to escape. He makes his way to London, only to find the great city completely deserted. MARS BEI
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