To mark the 75th anniversary of HG Wells's death, the UK's Royal Mint issued a £2 coin featuring one of the iconic Martian machines from the 1898 novel The War of the Worlds. In the story, Wells described the fighting machine as a "monstrous tripod, higher than many houses." Unfortunately, the machine on the coin has, um, four legs. And that isn't all. From The Guardian:
Science fiction novelist and professor of 19th-century literature Adam Roberts, who is author of a biography of Wells and vice president of the HG Wells Society, also criticised the depiction of the Invisible Man, shown in a top hat; in the book he arrives at Iping under a "wide-brimmed hat".
"It's nice to see Wells memorialised, but it would have been nicer for them to get things right," Roberts said. "A tripod with four legs is hard to comprehend (tri: the clue is in the name), and Wells's (distinctly ungentlemanly) invisible man, Griffin, never wore a top hat … I'd say Wells would be annoyed by this carelessness: he took immense pains to get things right in his own work – inviting translators of his book to stay with him to help the process and minimise errors and so on."[…]
Asked about the errors, a spokesperson for The Royal Mint said, "We have created a new £2 coin to celebrate the life and works of HG Wells. The coin depicts scenes from famous works such as War of the Worlds and the Invisible Man as imagined by designer Chris Costello." Costello has said he was inspired by "vintage HG Wells book covers and movie posters".
