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This past weekend The Widget and I set out to visit the last remaining laboratory in the United States used by Nikola Tesla. I knew going into it that this was going to be a rough one as no matter what we actually saw or learned. Earlier in the week she asked me if there would be robots and giant turbines, and would we get to see lightning flying all around the lab.

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H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds was first published in serialized form in Britain’s popular Pearson’s Magazine in 1897. It was a huge success.

So huge, in fact, that Hearst published it in his Cosmopolitan magazine later that year in New York. Again, it was wildly popular, though its overall impact on the American populace was limited by Cosmopolitan‘s smaller print run. Hearst was no chump though, and in 1898 his Boston Post ran another serialization of War of the Worlds. And, yet again, the story did gangbusters. The Boston Post was widely read throughout all of New England. Wells had never had so many eyes on his work. The Post‘s serialization was so well-received it led directly to the release of War of the Worlds in America as a novel. The most significant thing about the novelized edition is that it was the first time War of the Worlds was printed in America legally.
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The more immediately feasible and more directly weaponized version of Project Orion, Project Pluto

Annie Oakley and her 50 Lady Sharpshooters Thank you to Team Robo editor, researcher, and unsung hero Lee Black for that one.