In his recent Internet appearances to answer fans' questions about War of the Worlds, Steven Spielberg said he had always wanted to make a move of the H.G. Wells book, but had felt that some previous movies had glommed (my word not his) many of the better parts. In rereading the book, however, Spielberg said he discovered elements that other films have passed over.

As the Howell Township shoot shows, Spielberg brought out the Red Weed element that the book highlighted - an alien growth that thematically echoed the alien invasion, playing off Wells environmental concerns.

Yet inherent in most of Wells' writing is also the concept of advanced technology especially in regard to weapons.

Wells and his American contemporary, Mark Twain (in his book Connecticut Yankee) laid out the frame work for modern warfare that would unveiled in the public arena during World War I. While Wells in War of the Worlds pointed out the advantages of aerial observation, Twain predicted the massive deployment of automatic weapons and trench warfare.

Wells, Twain and Jules Verne helped give shape to what was to become 20th Century science fiction. The idea behind their science fiction was to paint a picture of contemporary culture, introduce the latest scientific developments and then contemplate on their impact on society.

For Wells, this meant - particularly in War of the Worlds - how progress was really an illusion (for us and the aliens) and showed that when it came to a fight for survival, we all reverted to our most savage selves, using whatever means possible - even if it meant we had to ruin the earth in order to keep it out of the hands of our enemies.

While the heat rays employed by the Aliens are still a thing of future wars, some of the other predictions Wells made for modern war came true - in particular the use of poison gas to subdue enemy defenses.

The cry of "gas attack" became an element of terror for soldiers on the front line of what was then called The Great War, and a haunting often debilitating memory for those who managed to survive.

"Black Smoke," as Wells called it, was a secondary weapon in the arsenal of the aliens, one deployed after human cannons managed to kill one of the invaders.

(Wells described that death and the ritual of the aliens' rescue of the fallen hero in terms that Homer might have envied).

The book first reports the use of Black Smoke from the view point of the more distant brother still in London at the time, a technique of horror Wells used several times to good effect - by taking a literary long-shot first of a scene then zooming in later to give a more detailed account.

It is the book's main character and the mad curate with whom he has taken up that report the use of black smoke in detail, describing how the alien machines lifted up black tubes from their sides and from which canisters were launched.

"There was no flash. No smoke. Simply that loaded detonation," the main character reports. "These canisters smashed on striking the ground. They did not explode - and incontinently disengaged an enormous volume of inky vapor, curling and pouring upward in a huge and ebony cumulus cloud… and the touch of that vapor, the inhaling of its pungent wisps, was death to all that breathe."

One simply has to imagine the tear gas scenes from one of the Terminator movies to truly appreciate how farsighted Wells was in his description of modern weapons.

In modernizing War of the Worlds, Spielberg might well bring chemical and biological warfare up to date, giving his aliens their own version of anthrax or one of the other weapons of mass destruction so well reported our daily news.