After more than 100 years, H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds still captures our attention

Here are some neat signs which illustrate that more than 100 years after H. G. Wells’ seminal science fiction novel The War of the Worlds (1898) was first published as a serial in Britain's Pearson’s Magazine in 1897, it continues to capture our attention:

• Steve Mollmann, a graduate student and teaching assistant in literature at the University of Connecticut, is working on a paper about two unauthorized American serializations of The War of the Worlds that were printed in the New York Evening Journal and Boston Post newspapers in late 1897 and early 1898.

• British SF author Eric Brown takes science fiction horror to a new level of morbidity with his forthcoming novel, The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies (2009), in which he has "taken the regular narrative of H.G. Wells’s book and has blended his own thoughts on a zombie apocalypse into it seamlessly.” The novel, published by Coscom Entertainment, is scheduled to be released on April 30th.

• Grovers Mill Pond in New Jersey, which was the site of the Martian landing described in the famous 1938 Orson Welles radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds, has undergone an extensive restoration, making the pond inhabitable for fish again. Governor John Corzine attended a ceremony in which the pond was restocked with blue gills, pumpkin seed sunfish, largemouth bass, brown bullheads and catfish.

Pictured above: Cover of Eric Brown’s forthcoming novel, The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies (2009).