The classic Mars invasion of Earth tale, told in excruciating detail, from the viewpoint of the invaded England. One of the key Science Fiction books. In the 21st century, a fair bit of Well's works and writing are not ageing well, and I feel it's come to the point that older works, especially sci-fi need to be judged in the context of when they were written - and this was written in 1898! 6 out of 12.

Paraphrasing Whitehead, I would say that the safest general characterisation of the science-fiction tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to H. G. Wells. Indeed, The War of the Worlds is probably the most influential novel of the whole science fiction genre, as well as a significant part of the horror category. I remember reading this short novel as a child and being viscerally engrossed and terrified. Rereading it now made me aware of a few more things. First, I realised how this book sums up and, in a way, accomplishes some of the things H. G. Wells had experimented with before. To name a few: the Darwinian conflict between two similar species (The Time Machine), the fascination for freakish life forms (The Island of Dr Moreau), the chase around working-class London and its surrounding area (The Invisible Man).

It is possible that H. G. Wells’s remarkable book was perceived, at the close of the 19th century, as just a fin de siècle catastrophic story — similar to, say, Mad Max or Terminator at the end of the 20th. In hindsight, The War of the Worlds is much more than that. It is indeed the kernel and the seed of all the later tales of extraterrestrial invasion and tropes of apocalyptic destruction, from H. P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space to Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood's End, Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters, Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, Arkady Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic, Michael Faber’s Under the Skin, Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life, or Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation… Not to mention films and TV: Alien, Independence Day, and so many more that I forget as I write this short note.

What strikes me the most is that Wells depicts humanity in the shoes of the invaded party and pictures the invaders as an alien race of bloodthirsty molluscs — which, in itself, sounds like a veiled but stark criticism of Western imperialism and sense of superiority. But, as it turns out, Wells’s prophetic vision was not so much that of a War of the Worlds with extraterrestrial invaders, but precisely a vision of the World War between fellow humans, that would break out some twenty years later, with a technological arsenal not unlike that of the Martians (cf. mechanised artillery, chemical warfare, surgical strikes). Later still, when the Second World War began, and the Nazis were about to invade the whole of Europe, Orson Welles remembered this old tale about a Martian invasion. He turned it into an incredibly relevant radio sensation. The masses of refugees, described by H. G. Wells, fleeing the war in a disorderly and life-threatening manner is a sight anyone may witness even today, despite all the concrete walls or steel fences that are supposed to stop them.

In short, this is an unavoidable masterpiece. The only reproach I could make is regarding the ending. The deadly flu epidemic the Martians eventually suffer from feels a bit like a disappointing Deus ex Machina. As a side note: historically, things unfolded the other way around when Spanish Conquistadors landed on the shores of the New World. They didn’t win against the Aztec and Inca Empires so much because of the superiority of their weapons, religion or culture, but because they were bringing the smallpox virus along with them — the first major and unwitting case of biological warfare.

Edit: Wells’s novel has been brought to the screen a significant number of times, one of the most recent ones being Steven Spielberg’s adaptation (2005) with Tom Cruise. The film takes a few liberties with the book, setting the story in present-day Connecticut. However, one very clever unfaithfulness is that the aliens do not come from Mars but from underground (a nod to The Time Machine, no doubt). Spielberg isn’t new to the alien-first-contact genre. But this is an outright nightmarish and nail-biting take on what had once been a benevolent musical spaceship or a heart-warming horticultural E.T. longing for home — in this film, aliens also play the trombone and are versed in landscaping. Still, they spray their gardens with human blood. Spielberg’s War of the Worlds comes after the intense and graphic scenes of the Omaha Beach assault in Saving Private Ryan and is roughly in the same vein. Some scenes, like the innumerable bodies, suddenly floating down a glistening river, or the empty cloths raining from a blazing sky, are strangely beautiful and horrifying. In the midst of the gruesome devastation, Tom Cruise, Tim Robbins and Dakota Fanning are exceptional, playing the parts of regular people, suddenly overwhelmed with PTSD and facing the brutal ending of all things.

Having trouble concentrating while reading physical books lately

Okay guilty reading admission here - especially since I already have a couple of books on the go but I have recently been the War of the Worlds Immersive experience in London and I have to say that it re-fired my love for this story.

Yes many things can be said about the negative points of the story but for me this story has some remarkable connections from the first Science Fiction books I convinced my school to read and study in class the the musical version being played to death by my brother and the artwork in the vinyl version firing my fascination with science fiction and fantasy art.

So yes I raced through this book and regret none of it - there are some books regardless of what the world things of them that mean so much to us and I think the ability to stop and go back and appreciate them is something that should never been overlooked or dismissed.

The classic science fiction novel from HG Wells that sets the standard for all the others.

The book was written between 1895 and 1897 and published as a book in 1898 although it had been serialised in magazines in both the UK and USA the year before.

The novel is a narrative of both an unnamed man in Surrey and of his younger brother in London

Martians invade England over a period of a week, a separate large container landing each day in various parts of the South. The Martians build killing machines with an infernal death ray that melts everything in its beam.

All the machines seem to be heading for London when their march comes to a sudden end.

There are some surprising inconsistencies in the story, but I can't mention them because they would count as spoilers.

This iconic alien invasion adventure is so revolutionary forward thinking, every Sci-Fi film or tv show owes a massive debt to this story!

I’d imagine everyone would be familiar with either the 1953 or 2005 movies, there’s also the famous 1938 radio broadcast that caused a huge panic in America.
Those are all good adaptations, but what I practically loved about the book was the invasion starting in Woking!

London and the surrounding towns and boroughs are integral to the story, places that I’ve visited being attacked by extraterrestrial beings is my favourite type of Sci-Fi.

Told through an unnamed narrator, this story had originally being serialised in Pearson’s Magazine during 1897.
I can imagine readers of the time being desperate to know how the cliffhangers resolved themselves, it kept me wanting to read the next chapter.

The BBC are planning a new adaptation set during the Victorian era just like the original story, I’m now desperate to see it.
I just wished they’d announce an air date soon!

16-year old Matt of 1897 would have thought The War of the Worlds was Bully! And I would not have shut up about the cool ironclad battles and heat rays and I would have tried to get all my classmates or fellow mill workers to read it. A proper good tale well ahead of its time.

dnf@50%

The Martians are coming!

THE MARTIANS ARE COMING!!!

A-hem... Second on my list of all-time favourite classics to re-read this year is H.G. Wells' phenomenal 'The War Of The Worlds'. Contrary to popular belief, this book is not the first book about an alien invasion, but it is the first book about alien invasion that anybody but the most knowledgeable science fiction geeks will have heard of.

The plot is simple: Mars attacks Earth, us inferior humans can't do anything about it and then the Martians get wiped out by Earth germs because they have no natural immunity to them. It's a simple plot but plot isn't what the book's about.

The reason I love this book so much is because it does a fantastic job of showing how powerless humanity would be if attacked by extra-terrestrial beings. Stephen Hawking famously said that he hopes extra-terrestrial life doesn't find us because they would have to be much more advanced technologically than us and history has shown us that when a more advanced civilisation meets a less advanced civilisation it's pretty much always really bad news for the less advanced civilisation. As much as the Roddenberry fans among us might dream of peaceful contact between species from distant worlds, Hawking probably has a point.

This book was actually criticised when it was first published (serialised in a newspaper or magazine; I forget which) for being too graphic and, while it's pretty tame by today's standards, it was a lot closer to the knuckle than the vast majority of the works being published at the time. It's actually pretty gross in places. (That's not meant as a criticism.)

Some of it seems a bit silly to the modern reader, mainly because the knowledge we have of Mars and space travel and the like is much greater today, but if you can get past that you'll get sucked in.

The Martians may not be coming... because they don't exist... but somebody is probably out there... and, you never know, they may well be watching us... keenly and closely...

What's that bright green light in the sky? That's really weird... no, no... AAAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!

“For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence, and that I stood there alone, the last man left alive.”

WOW. I loved re-reading War Of The Worlds. Well, the audiobook was absolutely amazing from start to finish. But that counts... right? Anyway, the pacing was perfect. My jaw dropped multiple times throughout the book and I can't help but admire the fact that War of the Worlds is an all-time classic. It's amazing!

Five stars.

Sometimes you just can’t beat a good old-fashioned classic, and every alien invasion story written since 1897 owes a debt of homage to this one. Personally I found the story retained a sense of drama and tension even though I knew it in outline very well. It must have had a sensational impact when first serialised.

Something I hadn’t expected was that Wells seems to use the book to make a statement about the way animals were treated by humans at the time. The way the Martians treat humans is constantly compared to the way humans treat animals, and the humans themselves, in their new situation, are variously compared to cows, rabbits and ants, or to “a thing that for any passing whim of our masters might be hunted and killed.” Late in the book the narrator comments:

“Surely, if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity – pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion.”

What more to say about such a well-known book? Just that I feel it’s always worth reading the original version of these classics.

My first experience with this story came years ago with a children’s comic book version followed by Hollywood blockbusters. Now that I’ve finally gotten around to the original work I really enjoyed it. I liked the action set in Britain near Wells’ home and seeing rampaging Martians stomp on a variety of locations south and west of London and then into the city itself. Oops, there goes the western side of St. Paul’s. Literary contemporaries of Wells such as Tolstoy, Conrad and Proust will not have their reputations lessened by this work. Wells is not an elegant writer. He is maddenly wooden and more didactic than the Victorians he probably felt superior to. Read this for the action and novelty of the science fiction.

The Martians are characterless though that supports the story of these cold, superior beings. Wells doesn’t do much with humans either. The narrator, a “speculative philosopher” (what a way to make a living in the suburbs), occasionally comes up on another useful human type who is a convenient way to criticize mankind’s flaws or who advances the storyline. These side characters are often an excuse for Wells to hop on the soapbox and lecture. Please, go back to the action Mr. Wells.

There is an anti-war message and critical statements such as “before we judge them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought.” Taken with views of Martians snatching hapless humans to put in backpacks in order to feed themselves with blood “drawn from pipettes” it can be difficult to stay with the original message. Would Wells have been disappointed with how his book has been interpreted by pop films? Probably, but he certainly has made a lasting impression.

When panicked crowds in the book shout “here come the Martians” it isn’t time to roll your eyes. Wells created these ideas. They are not the cliches we think of today. He was the original and it doesn’t stop one from enjoying the book for what it is.