The Sarmaks
first entered the Wold Newton Universe in 1898 when they left the
planet Barsoom in spacecraft resembling
cylinders that were shot
out of a huge cannon. Years earlier they
had located
several extradimensional rifts or gateways
near Barsoom. Their technology was
advanced enough to send
probes shaped like crystal eggs through the rifts. The eggs sent back
images of
a green world filled with oceans, unlike their present world of dried
ocean
beds and rarified air.
They
launched a poorly
planned and badly executed invasion of the green planet known as Earth.
John
Carter, Warlord of
Mars discovered the invasion plans and destroyed their massive cannon
but only
the first wave of vessels had been launched. As was depicted in Mars:
The Homefront
by George Alec Effinger, in War
of the Worlds: Global Dispatches
edited by Kevin J. Anderson
Despite
their advanced
technology of giant tripods with heat
rays and
flying saucers, the devastation of the Invasion was actually quite
slight,
being confined to remote areas. They first landed in remote areas so
that they
could prepare for the second wave of vessels to land.
When they
were overdue,
the first wave had no choice but to begin the Invasion on their own.
A few
vessels did manage
to reach the outskirts of major cities like London, New York and Paris
before
the invasion was defeated by something they had not foreseen, a
microbe. Once
they Sarmaks were exposed to the earth
atmosphere the
effects of the microbes was quite rapid much like inhaled
anthrax. The
events of the Invasion were exaggerated for dramatic purposes by H. G.
Wells.
Two
years later, in
1901, the Sarmaks
tried to invade the earth again, but an earth espied through another
dimensional rift. This time they planned better, including contacting
and
creating an alliance with humans from the first earth they had invaded.
"The Circle of Life cult, lead by the
second Professor
James Moriarty, collaborates with the Martians in this second invasion,
based
on the cult members' belief that the Martian Sarmaks
are completely superior and should be the natural rulers of humanity"
However the
second earth was in which the laws of physics were slighly
different to the extent that magic worked. The inhabitants of Annwen as the second earth was named had also
contacted
people from the first earth, namely Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.
Having
previous experience with both the Martians and Moriarity
they helped defeat the second invasion. However the Sarmaks
turned on their Circle of Life allies and incinerated most of them.
James Moriary upon his return to Earth "realizes that he needs to
distance
himself from those events. He taps the remaining infrastructure of the
Circle
of Life organization on Earth, renames the group "Krafthaus," and
assigns Krafthaus members what seems a daunting task: the complete
eradication
of any substantial evidence of the existence of extra-terrestrials.
Moriarty's
goal is that in fifty years, by 1947, no one on Earth will believe in
alien
life or that the War of the Worlds really happened."
Anthough
Moriarity succeeded in relegating War
of the Worlds
to the realm of fiction, as a goodly portion of it is, he could not
eradicate
some of the truths buried in the fiction.
Wells'
description of the Sarmaks is as
follows--"They were huge round bodies—or,
rather, heads—about
four feet in diameter, each body having in front of it a face. This
face had no
nostrils—indeed, the Martians do not
seem to have had
any sense of smell, but it had a pair of very large dark-coloured
eyes, and just beneath this a kind of
fleshy beak. In
the back of this head or body—I scarcely
know how to
speak of it—was
the
single tight tympanic surface, since known to be anatomically an ear,
though it
must have been almost useless in our dense air. In a group round the
mouth were
sixteen slender, almost whiplike
tentacles, arranged
in two bunches of eight each.
This sounds
oddly
reminiscent of creatures from two other famous works of literature,
leading to
the question were the Sarmaks native to Barsoom.
The answer
might be yes and
no. That is their ancestors did not evolve their naturally but that the
Sarmaks had been on Barsoom to
have made evolutionary adapations to its
environment.
The Sarmaks ancestors were possibly Cthulhoids, either being the progeny of the
great Cthulhu itself or of its closest
relatives. The Cthulhoids were
extraterrestrial beings of vast powers who
could travel at will through out space, time and various
dimensions until their nefarious activities were curtailed by the Elder
Gods.
However their
progeny were for the most part untouched. Wells states in the War of
the Worlds
that the Sarmaks do not eat, that they
live by
draining the blood out of their victims and injecting it directly into
their
own veins.
I do
not deny that
the Sarmak are blood drinkers but would find it unlikely that this is
their
primary form of sustanance. I believe that
the Sarmaks are more akin to a mosquito
which collects to the
blood to be used in reproduction rather than some sort of
interplanetary
vampire. Wells relates that the Sarmaks
reproduce by
budding. The infusion of a certain amount of blood triggers the budding
process.
A group of
Sarmak with
access to a great deal of humanoid blood, either because of being
affected by
the human DNA that they were injesting or
as an
physical adaptation to better blend in with their prey, developed into
a more
human looking form, at least a form like a human head. They were the kaldanes, whom Edgar Rice Burroughs described in
Chessmen
of Mars. The kaldanes also bred a
beast of burden
which resembled a decapitated human body. The kaldanes
attached their tentacles to the central nervous system of the rykor and controlled its every movement.
From
information which Ghek the third foreman
of the fields of Luud,
told Tara of Barsoom, the kaldane
must have originally been a hive mind much like a bee but had developed
some
sense of individuality. Ghek states that
the kaldanes are all alike, that their
likes and dislikes are
shared by every kaldane. Ghek
also said that all the kaldanes were
derived from the
eggs of their King Lund which is accomplished parthogenically.
This sounds something like the budding process of the Sarmaks.
The Sarmaks
may also have been a hive mind which communicated telepathically as
Wells
suggested. It is possible that they achieved this through their own
evolutionary development or through some outside agency. This hive mind
was to
have consequences for the Sarmak as we will see.
Despite their great
intellgence, the Sarmak were also slow
to learn. They
launched another attack on the earth on October 31, 1938 at Grover's Corner, New Jersey. The three cylinders were quickly
destroyed and the
one martian
tripod disabled.
The Circle of Life managed to destroy the Sarmak corpses and destroy
most of
the technology left behind in this attack.
In 1953,
the Sarmaks once more launch an attack on
earth, this time a single
cylinder containing three tripods/saucers lands in a desert community
not too
distant from Los Angeles. The Sarmaks
had developed force fields which render existing
earth forces almost useless.
Having
designs of their
own, three Hive ships disabled and captured the Sarmak vessels. They hid the vessels
and captured
the bodies of the Sarmaks inside. Certain
portions of
the the Sarmaks
became dominiated by the Hive. Either the
Sarmak
were one of the few species that they Hive could infest or the
Hive's
group mind was stronger than that of the Sarmaks
and
so was able to override the programming of individual Sarmaks.
So far as I
can determine
this is the last time the Sarmak have made their presence known.
*Portions of the information contained in
this article
have been expanded and revised, based on new evidence that has come to
light in
the past few years. The new findings are contained in the article Invasive
Techniques.
Return to the Table of
Contents
QUOTATION FROM WAR OF
THE WORLDS
BY H. G. WELLS BELIEVED TO BE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.
© 2000
Dennis Power
quoted
text in red ©
1997-2000 by Win Eckert