The War of the Worlds (Golden Deer Classics)

By H. G. Wells and Golden Deer Classics

The War of the Worlds (1898), by H. G. Wells, is an early science fiction novel which describes an invasion of England by aliens from Mars. It is one of the earliest and best-known depictions of an alien invasion of Earth, and has influenced many others, as well as spawning several films, radio dramas, comic book adaptations, and a television series based on the story. The 1938 radio broadcast caused public outcry against the episode, as many listeners believed that an actual Martian invasion was in progress, a notable example of mass hysteria.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oregan Publishing
• Release date: Jul 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9782377875238

H. G. Wells

H.G. Wells (1866–1946) was an English novelist who helped to define modern science fiction. Wells came from humble beginnings with a working-class family. As a teen, he was a draper’s assistant before earning a scholarship to the Normal School of Science. It was there that he expanded his horizons learning different subjects like physics and biology. Wells spent his free time writing stories, which eventually led to his groundbreaking debut, The Time Machine. It was quickly followed by other successful works like The Island of Doctor Moreau and The War of the Worlds.

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The War of the Worlds

H. G. Wells

Published: 1898

Table of Contents

The War of the Worlds

H. G. Wells

Part 1 The Coming of the Martians

Chapter 1 The Eve of the War

Chapter 2 The Falling Star

Chapter 3 On Horsell Common

Chapter 4 The Cylinder Opens

Chapter 5 The Heat Ray

Chapter 6 The Heat-Ray in the Chobham Road

Chapter 7 How I Reached Home

Chapter 8 Friday Night

Chapter 9 The Fighting Begins

Chapter 10 In the Storm

Chapter 11 At the Window

Chapter 12 What I Saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton

Chapter 13 How I Fell in with the Curate

Chapter 14 In London

Chapter 15 What Had Happened in Surrey

Chapter 16 The Exodus from London

Chapter 17 The Thunder Child

Part 2 The Earth Under the Martians

Chapter 1 Under Foot

Chapter 2 What We Saw from the Ruined House

Chapter 3 The Days of Imprisonment

Chapter 4 The Death of the Curate

Chapter 5 The Stillness

Chapter 6 The Work of Fifteen Days

Chapter 7 The Man on Putney Hill

Chapter 8 Dead London

Chapter 9 Wreckage

Chapter 10 The Epilogue

But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited?…

Are we or they Lords of the World?…

And how are all things made for man?

—KEPLER (quoted in The Anatomy of Melancholy)

Part 1

The Coming of the Martians

Chapter 1

The Eve of the War

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence.

Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from time’s beginning but nearer its end.

The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbour. Its physical condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.

And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them.

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety—their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of ours—and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh perfect unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planet—it is odd, by-the-bye, that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war—but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready.

During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the illuminated part of the disk, first at the Salt Lick Observatory, then by Perrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard of it first in the issue of NATURE dated August 2. I am inclined to think that this blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun, in the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us. Peculiar markings, as yet unexplained, were seen near the site of that outbreak during the next two oppositions.

The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, as flaming gases rushed out of a gun.

A singularly appropriate phrase it proved. Yet the next day there was nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the DAILY TELEGRAPH, and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest dangers that ever threatened the human race. I might not have heard of the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer, at Ottershaw. He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess of his feelings invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a scrutiny of the red planet.

In spite of all that has happened since, I still remember that vigil very distinctly: the black and silent observatory, the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in the roof—an oblong profundity with the stardust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about, invisible but audible. Looking through the telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet swimming in the field. It seemed such a little thing, so bright and small and still, faintly marked with transverse stripes, and slightly flattened from the perfect round. But so little it was, so silvery warm—a pin’s-head of light! It was as if it quivered, but really this was the telescope vibrating with the activity of the clockwork that kept the planet in view.

As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye was tired. Forty millions of miles it was from us—more than forty millions of miles of void. Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.

Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of light, three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was the unfathomable darkness of empty space. You know how that blackness looks on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far profounder. And invisible to me because it was so remote and small, flying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles, came the Thing they were sending us, the Thing that was to bring so much struggle and calamity and death to the earth. I never dreamed of it then as I watched; no one on earth dreamed of that unerring missile.

That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I saw it. A reddish flash at the edge, the slightest projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and at that I told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm and I was thirsty, and I went stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way in the darkness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while Ogilvy exclaimed at the streamer of gas that came out towards us.

That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from Mars, just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the first one. I remember how I sat on the table there in the blackness, with patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes. I wished I had a light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy watched till one, and then gave it up; and we lit the lantern and walked over to his house. Down below in the darkness were Ottershaw and Chertsey and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace.

He was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars, and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were signalling us. His idea was that meteorites might be falling in a heavy shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets.

The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one, he said.

Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing caused the Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust, visible through a powerful telescope on earth as little grey, fluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet’s atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features.

Even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and popular notes appeared here, there, and everywhere concerning the volcanoes upon Mars. The seriocomic periodical PUNCH, I remember, made a happy use of it in the political cartoon. And, all unsuspected, those missiles the Martians had fired at us drew earthward, rushing now at a pace of many miles a second through the empty gulf of space, hour by hour and day by day, nearer and nearer. It seems to me now almost incredibly wonderful that, with that swift fate hanging over us, men could go about their petty concerns as they did. I remember how jubilant Markham was at securing a new photograph of the planet for the illustrated paper he edited in those days. People in these latter times scarcely realise the abundance and enterprise of our nineteenth-century papers. For my own part, I was much occupied in learning to ride the bicycle, and busy upon a series of papers discussing the probable developments of moral ideas as civilisation progressed.

One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been 10,000,000 miles away) I went for a walk with my wife. It was starlight and I explained the Signs of the Zodiac to her, and pointed out Mars, a bright dot of light creeping zenithward, towards which so many telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night. Coming home, a party of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing and playing music. There were lights in the upper windows of the houses as the people went to bed. From the railway station in the distance came the sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened almost into melody by the distance. My wife pointed out to me the brightness of the red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging in a framework against the sky. It seemed so safe and tranquill.

Chapter 2

The Falling Star

Then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen early in the morning, rushing over Winchester eastward, a line of flame high in the atmosphere. Hundreds must have seen it, and taken it for an ordinary falling star. Albin described it as leaving a greenish streak behind it that glowed for some seconds. Denning, our greatest authority on meteorites, stated that the height of its first appearance was about ninety or one hundred miles. It seemed to him that it fell to earth about one hundred miles east of him.

I was at home at that hour and writing in my study; and although my French windows face towards Ottershaw and the blind was up (for I loved in those days to look up at the night sky), I saw nothing of it. Yet this strangest of all things that ever came to earth from outer space must have fallen while I was sitting there, visible to me had I only looked up as it passed. Some of those who saw its flight say it travelled with a hissing sound. I myself heard nothing of that. Many people in Berkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex must have seen the fall of it, and, at most, have thought that another meteorite had descended. No one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night.

But very early in the morning poor Ogilvy, who had seen the shooting star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on the common between Horsell, Ottershaw, and Woking, rose early with the idea of finding it. Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far from the sand pits. An enormous hole had been made by the impact of the projectile, and the sand and gravel had been flung violently in every direction over the heath, forming heaps visible a mile and a half away. The heather was on fire eastward, and a thin blue smoke rose against the dawn.

The Thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst the scattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to fragments in its descent. The uncovered part had the appearance of a huge cylinder, caked over and its outline softened by a thick scaly dun-coloured incrustation. It had a diameter of about thirty yards. He approached the mass, surprised at the size and more so at the shape, since most meteorites are rounded more or less completely. It was, however, still so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his near approach. A stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to the unequal cooling of its surface; for at that time it had not occurred to him that it might be hollow.

He remained standing at the edge of the pit that the Thing had made for itself, staring at its strange appearance, astonished chiefly at its unusual shape and colour, and dimly perceiving even then some evidence of design in its arrival. The early morning was wonderfully still, and the sun, just clearing the pine trees towards Weybridge, was already warm. He did not remember hearing any birds that morning, there was certainly no breeze stirring, and the only

Reviews for The War of the Worlds (Golden Deer Classics)

[judygibson-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great story!

[pdcread · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the first time that I have ever read the War of the Worlds. I have been meaning to for a while now, but just never quite got around to it.

It is written as a narrative, from the perspective of one gentleman who lives very close to the landing site of the first Martian invader. He goes to see the landing site at Horsell sandpits, and is there when the first Martian attacks. Following more aggressive attacks from the invaders, he sends his wife of to Leatherhead to be with family, and he heads into London. He meets with various individuals, some of which he gets on with, and has to hide with a curate who he doesn't like much, as the Martians rampage across the south east.

It is quite forward looking for a Victorian / Edwardian science fiction book. He is trying to describe lasers and other devices, but he does not have the technological vocabulary to describe them as we would now. The dialogue is quite stilted, but given the time this was written and set, I would not expect anything different. What Wells does manage to convey is the terror that the population, and himself and his companions experience, and the despair and helplessness that he feels.

[tess_w · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

1950's martians invade earth. I suppose for the 1950's this was a great sci-fi book. The writing is lovely and descriptive, even though the plot advances slowly. I feel that many of the sub-plots are never developed. I read the free Kindle-version from Amazon and at about the 70% mark pages were out of order, repeated, etc, for about 7-10 pages.

[jlsmither · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reading this book gave me the same impression that watching Casablanca did for the first time. Everything felt clichéd, until I realized that this is the source of the clichés. Once I put this in the context it deserves, I realized what an impressive work it really is. At first, I thought it was an interesting choice to put the aliens in ground-based ships, like flying saucers with spidery tripod legs, and then having them actively work on the technology to make a flying machine. But then I realized that this was first published in 1897. That's six years before the Wright brothers' first flight. How’s that for context? This was before the horrors of the Blitz, before the use of chemical weapons, and before heat weapons. That's pretty amazing. However, there's not much outside the plot-driven action in this story. The only characters that even receive names are two women (and one's husband, who never appears) that the narrator's brother encounters. There's no background on the characters or much about them as people at all. Yet locations in and around London are all mentioned by name. My guess is that this allowed contemporary readers—likely predominately educated people in London who subscribed to the Pearson’s Magazine—to more easily slip into the world, making the story even more dramatic. For today’s readers, this isn't as effective because the language, manners, and style are already pretty foreign to us. The version of this I "read" was narrated on CD, and that made the language a lot easier to get through. I would also recommend reading the Wikipedia page on this, which provides a lot of good information, although it's a bit spoiler-y if you don’t know how the story ends.

[liivin · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What an imaginaton! Love all his books.

[joe73-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If you can forget about the films and take this in for what it is then it comes out pretty darn good. Wells was possessed of an incredible imagination. This is nothing short of brilliance.

[ikeman100 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well written but for more pessimistic then I expected. There is a general feeling of hopelessness and death in Wells' stories. Not the optimistic possibilities of Jules Verne stories. A sad Victorian fate seems to run through this entire tale. "Life sucks and then you die", seems to be a running theme in Wells' novels.

[theelliemo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

H G Wells' War of The World - the book that spawned a thousand alien invasion movies, frequently featuring Will Smith wise-cracking his way through a bit of world-saving. From Independence Day to Mars Attacks!, the influence of the novel on the science fiction genre can not be underestimated.

To call this a science fiction novel, though, is to miss a significant part of the subtext, the commentary on events in late 19th century Britain.

Narrated by an unnamed protagonist, we see through his eyes the unfolding of events when Martians land on Earth, in southern England, from the initial curiosity of the indigenous population, to the fear and panic when they realise these alien creatures are intent on destruction, to the beginning of rebuilding when nature defeats the Martians. So far, so science fiction.

But there are various themes that, for me, are far more important than the science fiction element. The book was written at a time when the British Empire was at its height; European countries had a habit of colonising overseas territories, imposing their laws and moral codes upon the indigenous populations. In War of the Worlds, an Imperial power itself becomes the victim of imperial aggression, allowing Wells, through the protagonist's thoughts, to dwell on this: 'I felt....a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an animal among animals. With us it would be as with them, to lurk an watch, to run and hide; the fear and empire of man had passed.'

Then there is much on Darwinism, survival of the fittest and the process of evolution; the Martians are described as having large brains, being of very high intelligence, but lacking the ability to move any great distance without the aid of machinery. Written at a time when new technology was making travel easier, this could be a warning; are the Martians what, ultimately, humans could become?

And there is some debate on Religion versus science. The protagonist is temporarily imprisoned with a curate, who's behaviour and views the protagonist has no time for. And yet, towards the end of the book, the protagonist thanks God for the turn of events: that the Martians were 'slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth'

War of the Worlds, read properly, is a thought-provoking novel, even now, more than 100 years after it was written - the themes it raises are still matters of much debate.

[ashishg_50 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A moderately interesting tale of marsian invasion of earth.

[theboylatham_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Eight out of ten.

From a series of seemingly mundane reports about odd atmospheric disturbances taking place on Mars to the arrival of Martians just outside of London. At first the Martians seem laughable, hardly able to move in Earth's comparatively heavy gravity even enough to raise themselves out of the pit created when their spaceship landed. But soon the Martians reveal their true nature as death machines 100-feet tall rise up from the pit and begin laying waste to the surrounding land.

[jonfaith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There isn't much use for the Humilation game in my regard, there are always blind spots and blank areas. I read this one today over three hours, pausing to admire its technique. It is a prescient novel, much as critical opinion concurs, one I find so haunting in its reach.

[jigarpatel-6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Published in 1898, three years after his famed debut The Time Machine, Wells presents a first-person account of a Martian invasion. By today's standards, the narrative feels detached. But the characterisation and concept shine. You meet a brave woman, an overwhelmed curate, a weak soldier. These very human interactions are just as welcome as descriptions of aliens and a London falling to pieces. A strong and thoughtful ending. Recommended.

[stahl2ricco · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

“the Martians are coming!”And they have Heat-Rays and Black Smoke to kick some English tushies! And they do!But as exciting as this all sounds, this book is rather boring. It's mostly about running and hiding and being frightened out of one's mind. No "war" to speak of. But lots of histrionics. Lots. I really wish I could have smacked the narrator's face. Lots. Also, the localities are very casually mentioned, and as I'm not familiar with those places, it made no impact on me whatsoever. In fact, the listing of places became a big part of my boredom. Where is he running? Then where? Ah, who gives a damn. In fact, I rooted for the Martians! Dang.

[mhanover10 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this as an audiobook. I saw the Tom Cruise movie and so I was comparing this to the movie. I don't think I would have wanted aliens invading Earth back in the time when there was horse and buggy and no cell phones and the weaponry wasn't as sophisticated as it is now. very entertaining for a long car ride.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting, but I prefer character-driven pieces.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the earliest stories of conflict between man and extraterrestrial beings, written in 1898, this is a pretty extraordinary book. The narrator is unnamed, a writer of philosophy and in this story he expresses various points of philosophy. This book has never gone out of print and has remained popular. That is pretty extraordinary, too. This story is not big on characters and none of them have names. It is written as a factual telling of invasion and rule by Martians. This book presents science facts, technology and ecological points in its telling. Another theme is apocalypse. People feared the end of the age as 1899 drew closer. There is a mix of Christianity and such constructs as natural selection/Darwinism. At one point, it felt the narrator’s experience was like the experience of Noah disembarking the Ark to a world of destruction and carian with carian birds eating the dead. While there seems to be Christian themes in the book there is the characterization of the curate’s emotional weakness and self centeredness that resulted in the need to kill him (natural selection).

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Martians attack!If you somehow have remained ignorant of the details of this classic story, be aware that there are major spoilers in this review.I have only recently started reading the works of H. G. Wells, and I'm sorry I waited so long. We tend to assume that books written over 100 years ago will be difficult reads, filled with convoluted sentences, arcane words and obtuse themes. But Wells is actually a simple, straightforward and highly evocative writer. I thought The Time Machine was moody and poetic. Surprisingly, The War of the Worlds was scary, suspenseful and humbling.The basic story should be familiar to most from the famous radio and movie adaptations. Martians unexpectedly arrive on Earth in cylindrical spaceships and quickly construct huge, three-legged war machines that immediately lay waste to the country around them. Wells' descriptions of the tripods looming of the smoke, hunting the comparatively tiny humans with heat rays and poisonous gas, are chilling. Wells describes the panic that overtakes London so precisely that the reader feels like one of the fleeing mob. In one of the more horrifying scenes, the unnamed narrator -- hiding in the basement of a destroyed house -- watches the Martians just outside as they drain and ingest the blood of their captives. Modern horror has to work hard to be this scary.In the face of overwhelmingly superior technology, man is reduced to a helpless, panicked animal. People are compared to ants scurrying in the road or to rabbits run to ground. Just a few days after the Martians land, civilization is effectively over. This is no feel-good Independence Day-type story. People don't rise up to save the day. The most frightening aspect of this novel is that it lays bare how truly powerless we are.Of course, the Martians are defeated by an even tinier foe: bacteria against which they have developed no immunology. While this development is something of a deus ex machina, the ending is still perfectly plausible. But will humankind learn from this experience? That remains to be seen.Reading the science fiction classics (2011).

[bridgey_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The War of the Worlds - H. G. Wells ***I left it a few weeks before I reviewed WOTW to see if I would change my mind about this book. I haven't.I think most people by now know the story of Martian's landing in London and creating havoc and death. The novel is written in the first person by an unnamed narrator (something I usually enjoy). We follow his journey from when the aliens first land all the way through to their eventual demise.The book is approaching 120 years old, so I anticipated that it may be more than a little dated, but this hasn't bothered me with other classics from the same era. For some reason, and I can't put my finger on it, War of the Worlds just really failed to engage with me. Very rare do I find reading a book a chore but this was one of those occasions. I fully understand the foresight shown by Wells and the way he used and described scientific information must have been really revolutionary for the time, and because of this I can see why it is still revered today. But for me it didn't work. I found the plot extremely monotonous and at times just wishing the narrator would get zapped by the heat ray. On more than one occasion I felt like I was reading an AA route planner as we constantly get told the place names he is travelling through (which would probably help if I knew my way around London, but I don't). The house scenario really detracted from the flow of the plot and just seemed a slog through, that twist for me was a little unbelievable (even more so than being invaded by Martians) and although it allowed Wells a chance to include a little segment of horror, the whole concept of the curate and narrator being imprisoned for 2 weeks was a step too far for me.I know many people are screaming at me right now, telling me to look deeper into the novel, examine how the appearance of the Martians has the potential to reflect humanities own future or how Britain at the time was an empire crushing many parts of the globe and War of the worlds could be seen as a vision or warning of our own fate. I have to agree that all these themes (and many more) are there for the reader, but I have to be fully absorbed in the plot to want to dig that little bit deeper. In reality my enjoyment would only warrant a one star rating, but that wouldn't be fair. The book did have it's moments of brilliance and I would be the first one to put my hand in the air and admit that it is more down to my personal taste rather than the novel, you only have to see the hundreds of 5 star reviews for this. I wish I had liked it, I really do, I tried my best, but 3 stars is the most I can offer.Has it put me off reading further H G Wells novel? Not really, possibly just lowered my expectations. Maybe the next one I choose will be one where I haven't heard the story before so hopefully the writing and events will be totally fresh.

[jlsimon7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love H.G. Wells. I read his works when I was young, but I was to young to appreciate it. It was hard for me to conceive then of the panic that would have occurred in 1938.

This is a brief little book that begins with a radio broadcast of Earth being invaded by Martians. The survivors are few and far between. It is an entertaining read that I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys short stories and sci-fi suspension of reality for a short time.

[girlunderglass · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

One of the books that set the foundation for later science-fiction novels, War of the Worlds is a tale of a Martian invasion of Earth. The book is split into two sections, the first titled The Coming of the Martians and the second The Earth Under the Martians. For a book that is only 200 pages long, it took me a long time to get into it. All throughout the first part of the novel I kept thinking "yes, okay, the Martians are frightening and literally bloodthirsty, the protagonist has been separated from his wife and home and the whole of England is being destroyed, but why don't I care?" It seemed to me that Wells never makes you feel anything for the protagonist, nor his brother, who features prominently in the story and whose "adventures" bored me to death. It is also perhaps a mark of of the age I grew up in that I didn't even wince while reading the same gory descriptions of disembodied human parts, burning buildings and cadavers that shocked Wells's readers in the 19th century. However, after reading half of the novel I finally stopped expecting character development and stopped hoping the protagonist's ordeal would move me. For I realized that the narrator is not, in fact, the real protagonist of this book. The real protagonist here is the whole of humanity and Wells is excellent at exposing and ridiculing the folly of the human race. For me, The War of the Worlds is best read as a satire on Victorian culture. First of all Wells critiques imperialism and colonialism in a very poignant way. Thus, the same British Empire that is constantly invading other countries is now being invaded by a more powerful race that merely wants to expand its territory and pays no regard to human lives. The invasion literature of the time that wants Britain attacked by a foreign force (typically Germany) is also ridiculed when Britain is in fact attacked by aliens. Furthermore, Wells mocks his contemporaries for still clinging obsessively to religion, after proofs to the contrary offered by Darwin's theories and by the (then) recent developments in geology, anthropology, astronomy and other sciences. In the book, a clergyman who considers the coming of the Martians to be the biblical Armageddon and prays for God to save humanity is presented as mentally disturbed and is, eventually, punished for his outdated views. Wells' message is more than obvious. The Martians are never presented as mysterious, supernatural beings that no one understands. In fact the detailed description of their anatomy and their possible evolution process was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting parts of the novel. Never before have the words "science-fiction" been more aptly used to describe a book. The War of the Worlds is exactly that - a book in which all the ideas are based on actual scientific theories enriched by Wells's imagination.Conclusion? The second part is much better than the first one; once you accept that you're not gonna care whether the narrator reunites with his wife or not and instead try to observe how the entire human race reacts to the invasion, the book can only get better.

[anterastilis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Review I had to write for class:Life on Mars has become difficult for the Martians. Having sucked their planet dry, they’ve focused on the lush, undefended nineteenth-century Earth as their next home in the galaxy. Humanity is completely unprepared for an alien invasion – no mass communication, no disaster plans, nothing. The people of Earth watch in confusion and horror as strange metallic cylinders fall from the heavens. Mechanical monsters kill indiscriminately and swarm over the countryside. The reader follows one man’s struggle to stay alive as the world collapses around him. Will the human race be able to defend itself against the Martians superior technologies such as the heat ray and poisonous clouds, or are they doomed to be enslaved by the marauding invaders? H.G. Wells introduced the world to such a scenario with War of the Worlds, creating a genre and a vision of life in the universe that impacts science and entertainment even today.What I really thought:Those of you that know me, know that I really dig sci-fi in screen form. I’ve never really been able to get into Sci-fi novels…maybe I’m just dazzled by the special effects. Who knows?Anyway, I did enjoy War of the Worlds. I had a hard time wrapping some parts of it around my mind – for example, an alien invasion in a world without mass communication. Nobody knew what was going on. People were crawling up to the spacecraft and kicking it, people were living normal lives just outside the reach of the heat rays. If this were to happen nowadays…well, you know what would happen. Skyfox 9 and Captain Bobby Ratliff would be circling the area, the Powers That Be would be analyzing what the economic and financial effects of the invasion would be – or perhaps the world would just dissolve into a haze of frenzied panic and we’d all freak out and look to our leaders for guidance – and then Bush would be able to get his stupid Social Security plan passed.Now I’m just ranting. But you know what I mean? Something that happens on a global scale without global communication – it’s hard to fathom nowadays. I was impressed by a lot of other things in this book too – but this is the aspect that will stick in my memory.

[06nwingert · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

War of the Worlds is a classic horror story. It is also the basis for most science-fiction as science answers every question the book poses. The 2005 movie was a good representation of the book. Also, I found a copy of Orsen Wells' 1930s recording of War of the Worlds, which is fun to listen to at night.

[danimak_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the greatest science fiction novels of all time.

[ambrosia4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Last year I read [The Island of Dr. Moreau] and was not at all enthused, so I undertook this with a bit of trepidation. Moreau made me feel vaguely ill and did not help me understand Wells' distinction as "the father of science fiction" at all. This book helped me understand it on several levels and revived my interest in the classics of the scifi genre.My edition (the Signet Classics version that mooched) had an afterword by Isaac Asimov, which besides being wonderfully written, helped put the book into context, which allowed me to drain even more meaning from the book that I already had. Unlike in Moreau, I saw where Wells' observations of humanity and philosophical leanings came in. His descriptions of chaos brought on by the Martian's terror and destruction could have been true in the late 1800's, the 1950's, or now. The ideas of men with whom the narrator spoke would be the same no matter what decade they were in. And while the science may have been proven to be false, the idea of otherworldly invasion is certainly still seen as terrifying.Asimov's afterword further brought up the parallels of the conquering European colonizers and the crushing Martian overlords. While this did not occur to me while reading the novel, it allowed me to drain a little more insight from Wells' head, which was a pleasure. It also allowed to further appreciate the timelessness of some of Wells' passages, particularly the "for neither do men live nor die in vain", as well as the strongest opening of any novel I've read this year.While Moreau did not age particularly well, I believe [The War of the Worlds] will continue to be easy to read no matter how many years pass and new scifi novels are written. I recommend it to all scifi fans as a way to understand the basis of the genre and develop an appreciation for the timelessness of certain novels (which I find a particular downfall with many scifi novels).

[laurenbethy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

War of the Worlds was a little slow for me, and also a little cheesy, but it is a revolutionary book for its time (and pretty short) so it's worthwhile to read. It was hard for me to get attached to the main character and that is key for me liking books, but it was fun to see what things H.G. Wells came up with in a time when science fiction literature didn't exist.

[akangas_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

War of the Worlds is a book that tells the story of a man, the narrator, and his plight through England in order to find his wife after an alien attack on the world. I enjoyed the book very much, especially the characters. They were very developed, considering that there were a few reoccurring ones. I also liked the author’s attention to detail. The settings were really well put together. I disliked the lack of action. One would think that a book about Martians attacking would be violent, but it wasn’t. The characters in the book were the most likable part. I thought that they were very well developed. The book was an average length, and there were only five or six important and reoccurring characters, so it is no wonder that they were very developed and understood characters. The main character, who also narrates the story, is a very detailed character, because it is easy to see his goal throughout the story, and figure out his personality. He is a caring person, but will only do what he needs to survive. Another thing that I liked was the very detailed descriptions. The author made the settings very clear and easy to picture. The settings didn’t change much, like the characters, so they were familiar, and easy to understand what was going on at the time. Everything that happened in the book was very precise with the amount of detail given by the author. There were very few issues with the details. I liked the amount of detail given by HG Wells a lot. The lack of action was a dislike of mine. The story of a Martian attack seems like there would be a lot of action, but there wasn’t. It did leave room for more detail, but that was somewhat less important with not as much happening in the well described locations. It made the book, which was relatively short seem very long and less engaging. There wasn’t even that much dialogue, so not much was happening. Where there was action, it was in very quick short bursts, and was hard to follow, making the pace very inconsistent, and not as enjoyable. War of the Worlds is an excellent book. Though it has a slow pace, with few fast parts, the characters and details make it an extraordinary book. It is a good book for a committed reader, because it is not an action-packed book as the title implies. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

[loucypher_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pods hit Earth from Mars. Aliens begin there siege on mankind , using super advanced weaponry and battle techniques, it seems improbable humans will survive. Follow this first person narrative of a professor who witnesses the war of the worlds.Great classic story. H. G. Wells was a brilliant man and very creative writer. If you put this book into the context of the time it was written it's amazing how accurate he was with his predictions of future technologies. Written in 1897 he was allready imagining flame-throwers, space pods, bio-warfare and robots. Amazing!

[jackdteague · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As a story, this book still holds up as a good read. I particularly liked the descriptions of the martian machines and thought how much more frightening these were then any of the movie versions that have followed. This is a classic in the best since of the word, the story is good and competently told with some very good writing, particularly some great descriptions of the aftermath of a devastating and utterly alien event.

[karlstar_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very early novel about aliens invading Earth. By now most people have seen one of the movie versions, but this is still worth reading. It still amazes me what Wells could imagine over 100 years ago. By today's standards this is very short, but still a great book.

[sprunger19 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. Besides being a fun in terms of the science fiction I was very impressed with the emotional description of what the characters were going through. The book was realistic in the sense that the characters were very real. There were no heros... just people trying to deal with something completely incomprehensible to them. When the Martians first landed the reaction of the humans seemed very real to me in that they acted in a group. The reaction of those who saw the Martians firsthand was much different than that of those who had just heard rumors. Also impressive was the fate of the Martians. Without giving it away, I though it was very ahead of its time (at least I thought so... I'm not from the late 1800's).