GOING TO THE MARTIAN HOP. The Tenth Mountain Division of the U.S. Army provide well-rehearsed extras for the latest War of the Worlds. A Sacramento columnist suggests that War is a popular topic for uncertain times: terrorism, the Soviet threat, and Nazis to name three. (Heck, there's probably an essay somewhere suggesting that the dreadnought race inspired Wells to write the story in the first place; for some reason I keep thinking of that passage in Capital describing capital as dead labour that, vampire-like, exists by sucking living labour, with the Earth-saving microbes an allegory of the internal contradictions of capitalism. There is a reason economists oughtn't teach literary criticism.)

How, then, explain the proliferation of rip-offs no matter how placid or how turbulent the times? Consider the Clinton era Independence Day, or for that matter, the Carter era debut of Star Wars, which the youngsters know as episode IV?

Did you know that some people who heard Orson Welles's 1938 radio version of War are still giving interviews?