Radio: Anatomy of a Panic

To most of 1,200,000 U. S. radio listeners who ran for the exits, peered down the pike for Martian invaders or otherwise conducted themselves oddly on the night before Halloween 1938, the Orson Welles broadcast based on H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds remains a booful, baleful memory.* They will perhaps never think of Mercer County, N. J. except as the place where a series of rocket-machines once fictionally landed, loosing battalions of huge extra-terrestrial monsters. For those interested in 1) owning a copy of the celebrated script (with indicated sound...