Pulp Apocalypse

"We have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding place for Man?; we can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space."--H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds?

The Beginning of the End

It has been nearly 16 years since the Great War? ended. It has been nearly 5 years since the stock market crashed, setting off a grim and unyielding global depression. Naively, we equated these events to the eschaton, blithely declaring that the end of all we knew had finally come to claim us. Millions of lives were lost. Nations crumbled.

These were disasters. But they were nothing compared to what was coming across the gulf of stars to claim the planet and its inhabitants for its own.

It is 31 October 1934?. Today, the Earth was invaded by powerful beings launching an unyielding assault from the surface of the red planet, Mars?. It began in Grovers Mill?, New Jersey. It has not ended.

The Martians? have looked hungrily at this world for long years. We believe that they have planned their assault since before the dawn of Human history, but we know, unequivocally, that they had begun cataloging? the planet's inhabitants and mapping our world by the end of the last century?.

Discovery

A Martian scout vessel? crashed outside the small town of Aurora, Texas, on 19 April 1897. The last transmission of the doomed ship was detected by a brilliant scientist, working dilligently in his New York laboratory: Nikola Tesla?. Tesla shared his discovery with his former business partner, George Westinghouse?, and together the two men mounted a quiet expedition to recover the Aurora wreckage. After gathering up the remains of the downed craft, Westinghouse began secretly funding the construction of a lab in Colorado Springs? for Tesla to use to learn more about the aliens. The two men began to prepare for inevitable invasion.

On 15 February 1898?, a second Martian crew lost control of their vessel over Havana Harbor. A U.S. Naval Vessel, the USS Maine?, was destroyed in the subsequent explosion, and the commingled remains of both warships remained undisturbed until the end of the Spanish-American? War? that October. When US forces began their withdrawal, the Navy discovered the remnants of the alien craft along with the wreckage of the Maine, prompting then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt? to direct the Office of Naval Intelligence? to take control of the wreckage for further study.

Preparations

By 1899, the ONI had assembled a team of scientists, including Tesla’s rival, Thomas Edison, to study its own recovered wreckage at a secret facility in Montauk?, NY.

Faced with the prospect of impending invasion, Tesla and Westinghouse’s Aurora Project? made secret preparations to defend the human race while ONI’s Hercules Initiative did the same.

Yet, so far we have been unable to turn back the Martian invasion. Our cities? lie in ruin, our race reduced to little more than livestock herded by the great alien war machines that surround us.

Scattered radio transmissions suggest that Britain? has fallen completely, and that only the Germans? and the Bolsheviks? continue to resist our extraterrestrial conquerors.

Now

The war is over. The world has ended. Humanity? has been supplanted; we are no longer the masters of the Earth. Our fate depends on the actions of heroes long absent from our history. Can they save this world? Can they save humanity from servitude?, and death?

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