[The earlier version of this song has appeared on this board before. This version appears, as the metacitation below indicates, in DSMP 5: Operation WINTERFEST. Of particular note is the pause at the end of the last chorus. --G.]
No one would have believed, in the last years of the 19th century, that human affairs were being watched by intelligences which inhabited the timeless worlds of space. No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets; and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely they drew their plans against us.
At midnight on the twelfth of August, a huge mass of luminous gas erupted from Mars and sped towards Earth. I made contact with Ogilvy, the astronomer, and we hurried to his observatory.
Across two hundred million miles of void, invisibly hurtling towards us, came the first of the missiles which were to bring such calamity to Earth. As we watched, there was another jet of gas. It was another missile, starting on its way.
And that's how it was for the next ten nights. A flare spurting out from Mars, bright green, drawing a green mist behind it: a beautiful, but somehow disturbing, sight. Ogilvy assured us we were in no danger. Perhaps a huge volcanic explosion was in progress, but he was convinced there could be no life on that remote, forbidding planet.
"The chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one," he said
"The chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one"
But still they come
Then came the night the first missile approached Earth. Hundreds saw it, but thought it was an ordinary falling star. Some say it traveled with a hissing sound, some that it landed with a green flash. However, next day there was a huge crater in the middle of Horsell Common, and Ogilvy came to examine what lay there: a cylinder, thirty yards across, glowing hot, and with faint sounds of movement coming from within.
Suddenly the top began moving - rotating - unscrewing, and Ogilvy feared there was a man inside trying to escape. He rushed to the cylinder, but the intense heat stopped him before he could burn himself on the still-glowing metal.
"The chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one," he said
"The chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one"
But still they come
Yes, the chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one, he said
"The chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one"
But still...
... they come!
- The Art of Noise & the BBC Æthereophonic Orchestra feat. Miss Rose Tyler
"Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds: The Eve of the War"
Operation WINTERFEST: Live on Jeraddo, 2410.02.14
[ Jeff Wayne et al.
"The Eve of the War"
Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds: The New Generation (2012) ]