Aaron DeVriesIn the 1957 Disney feature "Mars and Beyond" there is this little segment about media depictions of Mars including the war of the Worlds. The animation is silly but the martian fighting machine walk cycle is fun and interesting.
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swope@Aaron_DeVries
The walk cycle looks fine in 2D, but I'm not quite understanding it in 3D.
The walk cycle looks fine in 2D, but I'm not quite understanding it in 3D.
@swope in 3D it would require the hip section to rotate around in a strange way. It would look clumsy in 3D, it's just neat in 2D.
Isaac Ji Kuo@Aaron_DeVries @swope It is straightforward in 3D if you see the hub as rotating.
IIRC, Wells describes the motion of the tripods to be rotating, or maybe I'm just confusing with The Tripods.
Either way, a rotating hub makes it all work okay.
Captain Button@isaackuo @Aaron_DeVries @swope
I'd have to check the books, but in John Christopher's "Tripods" series my impression was that the base plate was continuously rotating as the tripod walked. I don't know if the crew compartment for the Masters was, though.
Edit: Come to think of it, the crew compartment probably was also rotating, because the Masters were tripods who would move by spinning when they were in a hurry. So they would not be prone to dizziness.
It's been dozens of years since I read The Tripods, but I think you and @isaackuo are correct that when moving fast the tripods (and the masters inside the dome) did the sort of rotation hub motion.
@cptbutton
I don't know if that level of detail was ever given for the war machines in War of the Worlds, but all the film adaptations seem to avoid showing a continuous gate (that I can remember). I specifically remember looking for the foot placements, but they are hidden behind the foreground.
@cptbutton @isaackuo @Aaron_DeVries
I'm not finding the passage online about how John Christopher's tripods moved, but apparently the introductions to later editions of the 2nd book say he consulted with Asimov:
https://skullsinthestars.com/2025/07/04/the-tripods-the-city-of-gold-and-lead-by-john-christopher/
I don't have the books handy.
Whoops, seems like the blogger got the wrong consultant -- it was Arthur C. Clarke. And he sort of punted on the solution.
But indeed The Tripods did a sort of whirling spiral, similar to @isaackuo 's rotating hub.
I got the passage from https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_City_of_Gold_and_Lead/PQ4uAAAAQBAJ
@swope @Aaron_DeVries @isaackuo
Digressing, but I've wondered what the Master's green-tinted native atmosphere was, such that their atmosphere was toxic to humans but could be made human-breathable by filtering it through green sponges. And that Earth's natural atmosphere was toxic, or at least unbreathable to Masters.
Green suggests chlorine. Maybe the sponges reacted with chlorine in a way that liberated oxygen?
Did the Masters plan to reverse the Great Oxidation Event?
Was _War of the Worlds_ the first example of xenoforming in sci-fi?
Maybe a question for @nyrath
@swope @cptbutton @nyrath @Aaron_DeVries Not aliens, but I figured Jules Verne might have written something with similar themes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purchase_of_the_North_Pole
It involves wealthy capitalists with a scheme to alter Earth's climates and get filthy rich with coal under the current arctic region.
Maybe more relevant is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Germ_Growers
This involves an alien invasion, with germs used to wipe out humans.
60sRefugee@isaackuo @swope @cptbutton @nyrath @Aaron_DeVries By when was the Arctic considered explored? That is, when were people confident that there were no undiscovered islands in the Arctic Ocean?
I would say 1950s, because Soviet and American submarines did sonar mapping of the Arctic under the ice.
But think small islands are still being discovered as the ice is retreating.
@swope @isaackuo @cptbutton @nyrath @Aaron_DeVries Maybe literal rocks separated from the shoreline by some meters, but not anything most people would call an island, not that I've heard.
@60sRefugee @swope @cptbutton @nyrath @Aaron_DeVries In any case, the same basic plot would work with Antarctica or Greenland. Basic idea is to alter Earth's rotation so cheap "useless" land underneath snow/ice is made more valuable by the snow/ice melting.
synlogic4242@isaackuo @60sRefugee @swope @cptbutton @nyrath @Aaron_DeVries for example, imagine what a band of rich greedy villains might do if they actually wanted say Russia's vast swaths of permafrost tundra to warm up, or icy nothern passages to open for year-round or even cross-polar shipping, or Greenland's ice sheet to melt so becomes easier to get at the rare minerals beneath.
but no. no, that is too wild to even contemplate!
*looks at world news headlines*
er, nevermind
@60sRefugee @swope @cptbutton @nyrath @Aaron_DeVries For big oil robber barrons, lawsuits are just a rounding error minor fee for doing business.
