Looking out my Backdoor: Martians, Killer Bees, Mutant Pigs and Hurricanes

Not many of us will remember, well, because not many of us were around, in 1938 in New Jersey when Orson Welles adapted the H. G. Wells classic, “The War of the Worlds” for a special Halloween radio broadcast over the “Mercury Theatre on the Air.”

Since the story of Martians invading earth seemed too silly and too improbable, more suitable for comic books, Welles asked his writers to gussy it up a bit, give it some bells and whistles. What they came up with was a minute-by-minute, recorded at the scene, rendition of a fake-news bulletin, the best part being the sound effects.

An...