I am a voracious reader.

I read multiple genres (in order of amount): crime fiction, fantasy, science fiction, romance, and nonfiction. I had never even heard of unfiction before the reading and video assignments for this module. It also seems that Grammarly doesn’t like it much either. (No shame here! I’d rather catch my use of “form” vs. “from” with a bit of assistance.)

I’ve never been interested in Alternate Reality Games (ARG), which is another name for unfiction. I like my version of reality just fine, thank you very much. While I have a few friends who are into Dungeons and Dragons and other (what I call) role-playing games, the majority of my friends are – dare I say it? – normal, I mean, non-gamers.

My first thought when I listened to Nick Nocturne’s definition of unfiction was of the War of the Worlds panic of 1938. I remember my father listening to his vinyl when I was a child, thinking I’d like my voice to sound like that when I read out loud to my classmates (meaning Orson Wells).  My father still listens to his vinyl of the radio broadcast that left the public that heard it in a panic. I called him when I knew I wanted to write about this event and asked him to send me pictures of his record (I originally thought it was a set of records, but it’s just the one.)  We spoke for a bit and while I tried to convince him to send a photo with his phone in a text, he flatly refused. He used his digital camera, uploaded it to his computer, and then sent it to me in an email. Thanks, dad.

Front cover of my dad’s vinyl of the Oct. 31, 1938 CBS radio broadcast.

Back cover of my dad’s vinyl of the Oct. 31, 1938 CBS radio broadcast.

So, how does this “antiquated” event in our country’s history come anywhere near fitting into Nocturne’s definition of unfiction?  I’ll get to that in a minute. First, I’d like you to take a step back from the digital world if you will. Computers and the internet – respectively – have come a long way. But so has the “sound bite”. If you are a devoted fan of someone’s podcasts, you have the radio to thank for that. Think about it. The invention of the radio – bits and pieces of sound sent across specific frequency waves – has made modern-day podcasts and online streaming radio stations possible. Think of early broadcast radio as the infancy stage of what we now refer to as online music streams.

Original broadcast on the night of October 31, 1938

Back to the War of the Worlds. H.G. Wells, along with Jules Verne (Journey to the Centre of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) defined a new genre of fiction writing: science fiction. War of the Worlds was written and published in 1898, 122 years ago. He went on to write The World Set Free, which was published in 1914. This book spoke about the possibility of creating an atomic bomb… (things that make you go “hmmm”) Sorry, I digress.

HG Wells
https://www.atomicheritage.org/key-documents/hg-wells-world-set-free

Nocturne defined unfiction as the “realm of storytelling (mostly based on the internet) which defies conventions of the medium (or website) it’s working with and stays in character as much as a WWE wrestler.”  The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) radio broadcast on October 31, 1938, certainly falls under these terms. He mentions the cardinal rule of “pretending that what is fictional is the truth.” Nocturne emphasizes the “element of insisting in the reality of what is clearly not real.”  While the radio station staff didn’t cotton to this notion, Orson Wells and his theatre company cast members did. They took HG Wells’ 1898 novel and wrote a script for a play based on modern (at that time) times and acted it out on air, to the point of instilling fear in the members of the public who heard the broadcast.

The first page of the script for the Oct. 31, 1938 CBS broadcast showing the “modern” updates (i.e early 20th century vs late 19th century when the book was written).
https://casn.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/resource_files/War_of_Worlds_script.pdf

Orson Wells and his Mercury Theater company cast introduced the radio play in the first ten seconds of the broadcast. (You can hear it if you click on the link above.) Nocturne would not consider this an event of unfiction due to what he deems a “second cardinal rule of unfiction: NEVER say you’re playing make-believe.” However, since the radio broadcast station only mentioned the on-air depiction of the story ONCE, those who listened in after the first ten seconds would have never known the cast was pretending. The script was written in such a way that it included (fake) “breaking news” stories that interrupted the music playing in the fictitious ballroom. I believe these circumstances, in turn, do allow the broadcast to fall under the guidelines of unfiction.

Orson Wells depicted during the broadcasting.
http://thenewsatvalleypublishing.com/young-orson-welles-radio-broadcast-subject-of-free-kennewick-library-lectur-p887-226.htm

The young Orson Wells (he was 23 at the time) became famous thereafter and went on to direct movies in Hollywood. The CBS station was investigated by the FCC but was found not to have broken any laws.

I’ll stick to my preferred genres of fiction and let the gamers happily play on in ARG.

(By the way, Grammarly still has each instance of unfiction underlined in red!)

 

Works Cited