Eat your heart out, Tom Cruise; Stephen Spielberg ain’t got nothin’ on Leonard Nimoy!
I remember attempting to read H.G. Wells’ masterpiece in high school, and failing miserably because it was just. so. boring. Every sentence in the book contained at least 3 SAT vocabulary words, making it cumbersone to read and nearly impossible to keep the plot in sight. Unfortunately, not even Mr. Spock can keep me awake for this entire record.
As a basic book-on-record, Leonard does the best he can with the vast moutains of clunky adjectives; his voice lends the right amount of suspense, credibility, and lack of emotion that is necessary for the narrator of this story. Fans of the book will probably either love this version, being only slightly annoyed that it’s abridged. All in all, Leonard Nimoy does a much better job as a book reader than as a singer. He seems in his element as a narrator, whereas his albums kind of sound like bad, slightly drunken exercises in karaoke.
But don’t take it from me! There are probably zillions of people out there who are huge War of the Worlds fans. Heck, H.G. Wells’ son scared the crap out of the nation back in the 1940s when he broadcast a radio-play version of this book; it’s that powerful. I’ll venture to guess that he omitted a lot of the adjectives for the radio version, though.
For your perusal:
Leonard’s singing career:
Narration:
War of the Worlds - exerpt 2
War of the Worlds - exerpt 4