CHICAGO—British writer H.G. Wells’s (1866–1946) tale of an alien invasion in his novel “War of the Worlds” has been a best seller since its publication in 1898. The science fiction thriller is still so popular that it has been adapted into films: one in 1953 and the 2005 Stephen Spielberg flick that starred Tom Cruise. But the most memorable and most well-known version of the futuristic story is that of the 1938 Orson Welles’s radio program.
Welles made the audio production sound like a newscast as he narrated a minute-by-minute account of an outer space attack on American streets. People who heard the broadcast believed that they were listening to real news and panicked.
