Skip to footer

The Google Doodle book club: What to read, according to Google

Want to join Google’s book club? Look no further than its Doodles. Check out Google's reading list.

5. “The War of the Worlds” by HG Wells

Google screen grab
HG Wells: The mystery of the three UFO-inspired Google logos has been solved

Is this much of a surprise? Probably not. Though Google has come a long way in expanding outside its predictable realm of classic novels and thought-provoking essays, at its heart Google is a tech company. And tech companies tend to attract futurist-minded employees. And futurists tend to enjoy science fiction.

What could be more emblematic of science fiction than H.G. Wells’ classic “The War of the Worlds”? And in typical Google fashion, the tech company didn’t just decorate the homepage in honor of Mr. Wells – it made it an event. In the weeks leading up to Wells’ 143rd birthday in September 2009, the homepage of Google showed the logo carved into farm fields by a UFO and tractor, and the tech company tweeted mysterious coordinates and a secret code causing confusion and intrigue among Googlers.

All became clear when Google posted a Doodle depicting the iconic three-legged alien machines that star in Wells' 1898 space invader classic.

"Inspiration for innovation in technology and design can come from lots of places; we wanted to celebrate H.G. Wells as an author who encouraged fantastical thinking about what is possible, on this planet and beyond,” the company wrote in a blog. “And maybe have some fun while we were doing it."

5 of 6
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.