The War of the Worlds

By H. G. Wells

Earth faces an unprecedented threat when Mars launches a ruthless invasion. The story, told through the eyes of an unnamed protagonist and his brother, unfolds the chilling tale of humanity's struggle against the seemingly invincible Martian war machines. As society collapses in panic and desperation, the survivors must find a way to outwit their technologically superior enemies. This classic science fiction novel explores themes of evolution, imperialism, and survival, holding a mirror to the vulnerabilities of mankind and the indomitable spirit to live through unimaginable horrors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Interactive Media
• Release date: Feb 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787241831

H. G. Wells

H. G. Wells (1866-1946) is best remembered for his science fiction novels, which are considered classics of the genre, including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). He was born in Bromley, Kent, and worked as a teacher, before studying biology under Thomas Huxley in London.

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H. G. Wells

The War of the Worlds

Published by Fantastica

This edition first published in 2017

Copyright © 2017 Fantastica

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 9781787241831

Contents

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

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)

BOOK ONE

THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS

CHAPTER ONE

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 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 tranquil.

CHAPTER TWO

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 sounds were the faint movements from within the cindery cylinder. He was all alone on the common.

Then suddenly he noticed with a start that some of the grey clinker, the ashy incrustation that covered the meteorite, was falling off the circular edge of the end. It was dropping off in flakes and raining down upon the sand. A large piece suddenly came off and fell with a sharp noise that brought his heart

Reviews for The War of the Worlds

[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.

[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.

[wordsampersand · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I liked this quite a bit. Familiar with the story, of course, thanks to various other dramatizations, so it was nice to finally read this. The second half is quite eerie.

[jon1lambert · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Arresting cover design, illustration 'a scene from George Pal's Paramount Technicolor production War of the Worlds, designed by Al Nozaki'...Green Martian invaders on garish yellow and red background.

[msaucier818 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this quick, classic novel. I knew the story already from the many adaptations in popular culture, but this book was interesting enough, and suspenseful enough, to keep me interested and turning pages. It is always fun to read the original story as well to compare it to the movies I have seen dealing with it. The Tom Cruise movie I enjoyed very much, and it did keep with the general themes and plots of the book. A good read I would recommend to any fans of science fiction.

[hopeevey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While I've listened to the radio play, and watched the old black and white movie based on Mr. Wells' novel, this is the first time I've actually read it. I very much enjoyed it.

Victorian novels in general seem to strive for verisimilitude. This one does as well, and succeeds. It's very believable.

The movie and, especially, the radio plays also had a strong quality of verisimilitude. They're both set in the US, with slightly different specific actions, but the changes are there to suit the different mediums.

Like [book:Time Machine], War of the Worlds touches on some very large issues of both the nature of humanity, and where humanity could go. Much to my surprise, neither novel is too heavy handed about it. It really is a natural out-welling of the story. I can't tell if the philosophy or the plot came first.

Now I'm craving both the movie and the radio play :)

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

Spannende klassieker, zonder meer. Ondanks zijn mythische status zeker geen topper.

[benuathanasia · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I enjoy the Orson Welles' Mercury Theater radio transcript quite a great deal, but this was boring in comparison. It feels more like a scientific observational record written in a poetic manner (think the British Romantic poets - Keats, Wordsworth, Blake, Byron - all reserved, yet flowery observation) than a personal/emotional memoir. The Romanticism style is great for an actual poem, but tedious and pretentious for prose. Either way, it's certainly a far cry from that soulless, brainless, action-piece Cruise and Spielberg crapped out a decade ago.

[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.

[abhidd1687-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

From todays perspective, the ideas are no big deal. But go back to a time when the book was written, when man still had to touch the skies, and then the ideas hit you.
this guy was a visionary. writing bout flying, aliens, time travel would require a keen brain. a book true to the sci fi genre

[mathewbridle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For sci-fi this is a must. I love the language that is used, what is today 'Old English', very eloquent, stylish and intelligent without ever being too clever. H.G Wells certainly new how to tell a story and put humanity at the very limit of its endurance. His characters are very believable, vulnerable and yet heroic in the face of adversity. I particularly enjoyed the flight of the masses through the streets of London.

Truly brilliant.

[amilofinn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

'No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's.' The aliens of HG Wells' novel come from the mysterious red planet, Mars. I found myself completely taken over by this sci fi classic, one hundred years after it was first published. The action starts in Surrey before moving cross country to London. I was working in Kew when I was reading this and at one point the narrator has to hide from the Martians near Kew Lodge, this made my lunchtimes feel particularly thrilling. I think the first person narrative make this book still exciting and enthralling even after all these years.

[john257hopper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There is little new that can be said about this classic SF novel, the first great invasion of Earth novel published by the father of the genre in 1898, and the precursor for so many that have followed since. This is, of course, a re-read, prompted by my having recently got into the mood by listening to Jeff Wayne's musical version, and watching both the 1953 George Pal film version (with excellent special effects for the time) and the 2005 Stephen Spielberg one (much better than I remembered from my first viewing). The description is dramatic and the imagery vivid, and in 1898 this would have been very graphic and, aside from the obvious features of the historical period, much of this reads like more recent science fiction novels in its uncompromising description of death, destruction and the worst of human behaviour as the massive tide of humanity escapes from the oncoming Martian war machines and their deadly heat-rays. The narrator, his wife and his brother are unnamed, as are the artilleryman and the curate, and there are very few named characters except for the astronomer Ogilvy and one or two others at the very beginning. This allows Wells to focus on the driving narrative. It is very short, only 141 pages, but this shows how a great novel does not need to be many hundreds of pages long. Tremendous stuff.

[mbmackay · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

One of the very earliest sci-fi stories, with the Martian invaders. Seems thin now - the famous radio play must have been well scripted to generate the realism to generate the mass panic.Read July 2006

[leperdbunny · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Title: War of the WorldsAuthor: H.G. WellsGenre: Horror, Science Fiction# of pages:Start date:End date:Borrowed/bought: boughtMy rating of the book, F- worst to A best: CDescription of the book: Aliens land on earth in big cylinders and start attacking humans.Review: This was an enjoyable read for Halloween- I finished it Halloween night and remembered I haven't posted a review yet. Definitely a fun classic.. Not a whole lot to it but I like the discussion about humanity. The first page reminded me of what Stephen Hawking was saying about aliens visiting us being like Europeans discovering the new world. Scary stuff and this book definitely still has some relevance to the discussion about extra terrestrial life.

[samlives2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is fast-paced, full of descriptive detail, and way ahead of its time. Wells was an amazing writer, and not just for his creative and exciting stories which set the bar for science fiction. Wells manages to weave political and social allegory into his novels, which I find very impressive for a work like this. It was Wells' writing style that really impressed me, though. The imagery throughout this book brought the story to life, and this is one of few novels that are crystal clear to picture in your head.

[krau0098 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I downloaded this for free for my Kindle. I have never read this before (I have seen a couple bad movies about it) but was eager to read the original story. Overall I liked the story. I thought parts of it were a bit drawn out and boring; but overall it was definitely worth reading...and much better than any of The War of the Worlds movies I have seen.The nameless narrator of this book tells about green capsules that fall to Earth. Inside them are strange tripod/octupus like creatures that use a heat-rays to destroy a number of people early on. The book follows the narrator as he struggles through the English countryside trying to make it back to his wife. Then for a while he tells the story of his brother in London and of the second Martian weapon they face, that of a black cloud which instantly kills people. Then the story winds back to the original narrator as he makes his way to London to see the final destruction of the Martians.Like most classics, this story is most outstanding for the story it told at the time it told it. There are probably better books out there now (Christopher John's Tripod series comes to mind) about alien invasion; but for the time this was a very forward thinking book.The description in the book is very well done and, it is, for the most part very readable and enjoyable. Wells does an excellent job of creating suspense at certain times in the book. He also does an excellent job at showing humanity both at its best and its worst. It is amazing how inhumane some of the humans in this book behave when they are in a panic. The most colossal tragedies this book show that there is space for great heroics and great evil in a time of mass destruction.I also enjoyed the irony behind how the Martians finally meet there death; it was suiting and says interesting things about evolution in general.There were some things I did not like about this book. Some of the parts just went on too long. There is a portion where the narrator spends forever describing every minute aspect of the Martians which was slow, another portion where the narrator is making his way across the countryside that was boring, and the part where the narrator is trapped in a collapsed house seemed to drag on forever. Wells gives great attention to the narrators situation but doesn't ever go outside of the narrators sphere of influence to see what is happening world-wide or what kind of reaction the rest of the world is having. Also the characters were pretty sketchy...this was definitely more of an adventure driven novel than a character driven one.Should you read it? Well if you like sci-fi and are interested in alien invasion then this is a must; this is pretty much the story that inspired a lot of later sci-fi stories. A lot of the story is very enjoyable, engaging and intriguing; but as with many classics there are portions that drag on a bit. I never found the language or writing difficult to understand, so that means this novel has aged well with time. If you are not a sci-fi fan, interested in post-apocalyptic stories, or alien invasion I would probably skip this in favor of something else.If you do really like this story and haven't read the Tripods trilogy by Christopher John I recommend that you do; the story is similar in tone, more character driven, and a wonderful read.

[davidgnp · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Just re-read this after many years, this time as a free download on my Kindle. I had forgotten many of the details of the story, and was gripped by it. The Martian fighting machines that Wells describes seem Heath-Robinson-clunky to a modern reader used to digital and electronic technology, but would have appeared state-of-the-art in the early twentieth century, still in the tail end of the Industrial Revolution. More universal is the sense of fear and foreboding that Wells conveys so brilliantly, especially in Part Two when we see our hero trapped in a house half-flattened by one of the Martian landings, trying to keep a crazed fellow-prisoner quiet as they hide from the enemy. Some typical Wells philosophising, too, on the nature of man and society. Certainly worth returning to.

[cmbohn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow! I read this over 20 years ago and only remembered that it was pretty good. This time around, I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed it! Intense stuff! Those Martians are seriously Bad News.The story is probably more or less familiar to almost everyone, so I won't go over it again in too much detail. But Martians have invaded England, and they are not coming as friendly tourists. They are here to destroy. It takes them a while to get moving, but once they do, their Death Ray takes out everyone in sight. And then they get even more clever.There were two parts that really struck me as just amazing writing. The first was the scene in London when the entire population of the city is trying to get out. It's nothing but mass panic and complete chaos. Wells is extremely believable. The part about the man trying to save his gold coins while an enraged cabdriver runs him down was so vivid that it will stay with me for a long, long time.The other part I loved was when the narrator and the artilleryman were making plans for life under the Martians. The artilleryman is convinced they will all be rounded up and used as cattle, unless they are prepared to fight. As he was talking, I could imagine exactly what he meant, how everything would change forever.It's always good when a classic actually lives up to its reputation, and for me, this was definitely one of those times. Now I want to read The Time Machine again and see if that one is just as good. 5 stars.

[carpe_librum · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed reading this classic by H.G. Wells and can understand how it inspired so many authors to explore 'alien invasion' after reading it. The narrator describes the events of the invasion in the past tense, so I struggled to understand how those listening to the reading over the radio could possibly think it was happening in the present. As I was reading it, I was trying to identify 'the passage' that could have inspired such panic but alas, I couldn't. Once I gave up this quest I was able to enjoy the writing and the developing plot. The most poignant part of the book was when the soldier was discussing the fate of human beings in years and decades to come and how their relationships with the martians would change. The soldier also claimed to know what type of human being would die in the early stages of the invasion and the characteristics it would take to survive.I wanted to linger here and explore this further but the main character left the soldier and continued his journey to look for his wife, and this depth of analysis was cut short in my opinion.All in all, a great classic and an easy read.

[dissidence_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This book was a struggle to get into - whether that was due to a lack of concentration because my last book was Catch-22, I don't know. It took me so long to read this relatively short book that I had to renew it at the library and I still only finished reading it the night before it was due back. It's the old tale of Martians invading Earth in order to feed upon us humans and steal our planet because theirs is inhabitable. Sounds like all the ingredients for a gripping story, right? It would have been if the book didn't sound like an A-Z atlas for the counties of England. For English people familiar with the geography and places mentioned in the book, I'm sure it adds a new element but to me it sounded like someone giving me directions: "We took a left into Chalk Farm, then went straight on to Shepperton and from there went towards Richmond..." or something like that. I actually went through the book, there was an average of two or three place names on every page. Coupled with the over-mentioning of place names, the book seemed to expect me to know what these places looked like and so I found it left out a lot of the setting description, meaning I was reading about all this action but I couldn't place it, and so the words just went over my head as I struggled through to find something I could place. I wasn't entirely keen on the way it was written - in that narrated, reflective and first-person way - and I found it difficult to keep up with what was happening to whom during the Martian fight scenes. The inclusion of the narrator's brother's experience was annoying and added nothing to the book for me.The book is separated into two books really; one is before the Martians and the other is after the Martians. I found that I enjoyed the second "book" a LOT more than the first as it wasn't just the main character or his brother walking down different roads and lanes etc. but instead the main character gets trapped near the Martians' camp and so we learn something about the Martians as opposed to something about the places surrounding London, for once. I suppose the ending is a bit lame for any action fans, but at the same time I didn't see it coming so I suppose that compensates.Not a book I'd read again in a hurry, unfortunately. I'm hoping that my first taste of HG Wells isn't an example of a consistent style because the narrative, the needless lists of place names, the annoyingly repetitive crowd shouting (I swear, the crowd's shouting of, "Way! Make way!" every five minutes spanned at least 5 pages...by that point, I was ready to exterminate them, nevermind the bloody Martians) and the limp action descriptions just weren't for me.

[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).

[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.

[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.

[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.

[tinapickles · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

War of the Worlds is a (more than) decent quick read. Its told in first person narrative and moves along a quick pace. The only fault I found with this book was that at times the narrator is not descriptive enough; a number of the descriptions and/or plot points fall flat because Wells neglects to develop the image fully. For example, at one point he mentions he saw the aliens do something to a human they are holding captive and that this both horrified and changed him. Yet, he fails to describe this particular action, and as a result the reader may feel cheated of a valuable moment of insight into both the narrator's mind as well as the martians. In other words, Wells has moments where rather than showing, he tells. Over all, a good period piece read.

[tony_landis_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I liked The Invisible Man much better, in comparison I found it difficult to become deeply absorbed in this work