n‘’Science Fiction is, then, a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environment.’’

Darko Suvin, ''Metamorphoses of Science Fiction''

I read The War of the Worlds some years ago when I was in high school. I don’t remember exactly which edition I read then, but I remember that it had no notes on the text, introduction or biographical notes. While I enjoyed the book, I felt that I was missing some subtle points. Then about a month ago I was gripped with the idea of finding a good edition and re-reading this classic. That is how I basically ended up picking this edition. And it didn’t disappoint. Reading it as an adult feels a lot different. Having been familiar with the basic premises of the plot, this time around I tried to focus more on the ingenious and metaphysical elements.

The book’s profundity is evident when you take into consideration the prevailing scientific thoughts of the time on such things as planetary system formations, theory of biological evolution and physiology. Wells’ Martians are at an advanced phase of an evolutionary timeline, exhibiting the physiological characters he himself conjecturally (and somewhat satirically) wrote about in his article ‘’The man of the year Million’’. Their evolution has rendered all organs redundant, except for the brain, eyes, an auditory organ and tentacles. Devoid of emotions, they are perpetually in an egocentric sustenance mode. The fact that they are further along in the evolutionary timeline is explained by the relative distance of Earth and Mars from the Sun. The Nebular Hypothesis asserts, this deviation in distance resulted in differences in cooling times between the planets during their formation process, this in turn influenced the genesis of life in the respective planets.

n‘’The Ripley gunners, unseasoned artillery volunteers who ought never to have been placed in such a position, fired one wild, premature, ineffectual volley, and bolted on horse and foot through the deserted village, while the Martians walked serenely over their guns’’

At the end of the nineteenth century, The British military forces of the time were geared more towards colonial objectives than combats within the homeland. The infantry was equipped mostly with bolt-action magazine rifles and water-cooled machine guns. By the time The War of the Worlds was published, The Royal Navy had adopted the the two power standard that allowed it to be as strong as the world's next two largest navies combined. The Majestic class of pre-dreadnought battleships had 12-inch guns housed in twin turrets for the main battery. These ships made up the bulk of the Channel fleet in the late 1890s. Between the two Boer Wars, the British Army had around 300 artillery weapons, which was less than what the French and the Germans had per 1000 soldiers. A significant number of these weapons were stationed in the colonies. In addition, I suspect a homeland defence might involve some cavalry and mounted infantry regiments.

With the description that Wells provides of the Heat-Ray and canisters of insoluble poison gas that can vaporize hills, it is not hard to imagine the military of that time being all but vanquished by the Martians. While there are instances of the Martians struggling from shelling, for the most part it’s a lopsided fight. There is a scene in which there is a mutiny amongst crew members of destroyers and torpedo boats from the hopelessness of the defence. The main line of defence against the Martians thus falls up on mines and pitfalls. In Chapter 17, we are also introduced to the fictional Ironclad torpedo-ram, The HMS Thunder Child, that gives a good account of herself against The Martians before being destroyed. Natural selection, as far as adapting to the threats of life on Earth, presents itself as the hero of the book. This is monumental when you take into account even 40 years after the publication of The Origin of Species, The Theory of Evolution was not widely accepted.



Although there are layers upon layers of ideas to untangle and interpret, I think the most plain one is Wells' critique of Imperialism and colonialism. The treble imperial themes of invasion, exploitation and acquisition of new lands by coercion were examined in some invasion literature during the Victorian era. The most notable examples being The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer or Wells’ own The First Men in the Moon. However, The focus of most invasion literature of the time leaned more towards invasion by The French or The Germans on Britain rather than by extraterrestrial beings. Even in The War of the Worlds, Wells alludes to this fact through Mrs Elphinstone’s hysteria at the prospect of crossing the channel to France.

As has been written extensively, Wells’s criticism of colonialism stems from his reading of the history of the Aboriginal Tasmanians. Starting with the Black Wars and culminating in the encampment and extermination of the nomadic aboriginals, this is one of the many grim instances of the history of imperialism. However, Well’s opposition and critique is very much reflective of a man in his era and not particularly palatable to a 21st century mind. From an early age, he was obsessed with Malthus and the depletion of resources through overpopulation. He envisioned future wars being fought over dwindling resources, much like what drove The Martians to invade Earth. Needless to say, most visions of Utopia wells wrote about in his latter years would at best be scoffed at today, or most likely dismissed on a scholarly and humanitarian basis.



The legacy of The War of the Worlds is immense. At the time of its publication, it reflected the pre-war anxieties of Victorian England. The cultural impact it produced was and continues to be colossal. It has spawned several film adaptations, TV series, games, radio dramas, comic books and fan fictions. Furthermore, countless alien inversion stories inspired by this book stand testament as to how it has entered our collective conscience in the meta sense. The picture above is taken from the town centre of Woking, Surrey, which is a major setting for the book and the address from which Wells wrote The War of the Worlds. It is of a Wellsian Martian Tripod made from chrome-electropolished stainless steel, and was inaugurated in the spring of 1998. Just a few meters from this statue, you can also find another one portraying the landing of the Martian cylinders.

It’s essential to keep in mind that this book was written before the advent of planes and tanks. Motor vehicles were hardly visible in late Victorian Britain. This brings me back to Suvin's quotation at the beginning of the review. The literary question to ask here is, has the author created an imaginative framework strong enough to accommodate an alternative reality different from the author’s own empirical environment? Wells had a scientific background that greatly influenced his works (Normal School of Science from 1884 to 1887). However, he was a writer first and foremost rather than a scientist. In a self-referential passage from The War of the Worlds, he indirectly dubs himself a ‘’speculative writer of quasi-scientific repute’’. As a good writer should, he is able to effectively connect his readers to his narrative. The narrative, while not possessing a highly polished prose, has the shoulders to carry Wells’ imaginative mind.

Therefore, in accordance with Suvin’s description, the question eventually becomes, what of the ‘’presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition’’ in The War of the Worlds? My take is, the reality imagined in this book, is a much more sophisticated depiction of an alien invasion than much of the Sci-fi literature that preceded it or was inspired by it. Characterization is irrelevant here. In fact, Wells doesn’t even give any of the major characters names. His Martians are not serving a dystopian vision of a discrepant society. Rather, they put forward a picture of a society under stress from relentless efficiency at the expense of all others facets of life. The humanity of Wells is not like that of a Dickensian tenderness. Instead, it is admonishing. The Martians are a cautionary representation of our own evolved selves, but one in which our humanity is subordinated to efficient consumption. They take our apprehension towards disaster and flip it into a scenario of total catastrophe using a logical sequence of events.

You would think that as Man grows in intelligence he would likewise grow in morality. But you would be wrong. Or at least, that is what history teaches us. About a hundred years before Harvard professor Robert Coles wrote his now famous article “The Disparity Between Intellect and Character,” H.G. Wells made much the same observation.

At the end of The War of the Worlds, the unnamed narrator returns to his house and sees the paper he had been working on before the war began. “It was a paper on the probable development of Moral Ideas with the development of the civilizing process” (194). There’s one for the wastepaper basket! As with much science fiction, the aliens in The War of the Worlds reveal more about us than about them.

Throughout the book, Wells compares Man with the lower animals. And it becomes increasingly uncomfortable. At the start, we are microbes under the Martians’ microscope. We might be able to pass over the metaphor without much thought if only he didn’t go on to compare us to monkeys, lemurs, dodo birds, bison, ants, frogs, rabbits, bees, wasps, and rats ~ animals we exploit or exterminate without compassion.

The narrator doesn’t fail to make the connection between the Martians’ treatment of humans and our treatment of animals. When he discovers that the Martians regard human beings as food, he is able to shift his perspective and see the human diet from the point of view of an animal that is typically regarded as food: “I think that we should remember how repulsive our carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit” (139).

Moreover, it is not only animals that we destroy. Other humans are also fair game.

“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 own 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?” (5).

If only moral growth went hand-in-hand with intellectual growth! But apparently evolution doesn’t work that way. So a look at the Martians is a look into a mirror. It is also a look into our own future. And it is a future difficult to look upon. The Martians are ugly. And not just on the outside.

Evolution has turned them into little more than heads. Thanks to natural selection, their bodies function with marvelous efficiency. They need not eat, sleep, or engage in sexual intercourse. They communicate by telepathy. Through Darwinian adaptation, they lost what they did not need to survive and developed what they did need. And what they needed was intellect, not character. Heads, not hearts.

Is this where our species is headed? Wells was an advocate of Darwinism and if the Martians represent the future of Man, then The War of the Worlds must be read as a cautionary tale. The Epilogue supports this interpretation:

“If the Martians can reach Venus, there is no reason to suppose that the thing is impossible for men, and when the slow cooling of the sun makes this earth uninhabitable, as at last it must do, it may be that the thread of life that has begun here will have streamed out and caught our sister planet within its toils. Should we conquer?” (198-199).

Should we conquer? If we don’t want to become blood-sucking heads without hearts we had better not! On the contrary, we had better learn compassion for those over whom our superior intelligence gives us power. “Surely, if we have learnt nothing else, this war has taught us pity —pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion” (166).

It's a shame that the first time I read this, it was a class assignment for high school. Being forced to read something for school is a far cry different thing than choosing to read something of your own volition. Being forced to read saps the joy from the experience. (Not always, but I'm sure some of you can relate.

Having recently read this, I was swept away by the story. The main thread is initiated by what is believed to be a "meteor" landing on Horsell Common in Great Britain. The main character lives nearby in order to narrate the events, firsthand, which are needless to say, remarkable. The meteor was an artificial cylinder sent from Mars. When a concerted effort is made to communicate, the group is incinerated by some form of advanced technology. The military responds by surrounding the cylinder.

After borrowing a dogcart from the neighbor to take his wife to Leatherhead and supposed safety, our MC returns in order to make good on his loan. He witnesses for the first time a three-legged fighting machine that shoots heat rays and spits a black smoke chemical weapon. When the nameless MC arrives to return the cart that he borrowed, he is too late. The neighbor is dead along with the army that had surrounded the pit. There is a ton more action and horror that pervades this classic novel.

A few years ago, my rating would have recognized the book as classic, but I would have missed the nuances that are very much alive in the text. Despite the action-adventure aspects of the tale, there are subtle and profound contrivances that include British colonialist themes. I'm so happy that I picked this classic book up, again.

4.5 stars.
Read this in high school English class, would you believe!

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.

Günümüz bilim kurgu kitapları ile kıyaslarsanız biraz sıkıcı gelebilir. Ancak yazıldığı yılın 1895 olmasını göz önüne alarak okursanız, bu tarihte uzay yolculuğu, uçaklar ve lazer silahlarınsan bahsediyor olması muazzam.

Absolute classic. At the end of the 19th century earth (Britain to be precise) is invaded by the Martians. They come in kind of "cylinders" and devastate the surroundings of London. The population of London flees. There is absolute chaos. Can those invaders be stopped? A compelling novel on humanity feeling too safe on their planet. We can't let our guards down. As we can see now the invaders may not come from outer space but a virus may even be deadlier than extraterrestrials. Great descriptions, interesting philosophical ideas (the soldier) and a bit of romance at the end. A modern classic and must read!

"Las obras de Mr. Wells pertenecen, sin duda, a un tiempo y un grado de conocimiento científico futuro muy alejado del presente, pero no completamente fuera de los límites de lo posible."
Julio Verne

Ya lo he afirmado en reseñas anteriores. La capacidad de anticipación a la tecnología y el futuro que tenía Herbert George Wells era ampliamente superior a la de Julio Verne a punto tal que el visionario francés lo admitía sin reparos.
Pero además de esta característica tan marcada en sus novelas, Wells nos alertaba sobre los posibles peligros que involucraba a la tecnología en poder de los hombres, sobre los riesgos de los avances científicos y los alcances de la ciencia sobre el planeta.
Sumado a esto, es importante reconocer también que Wells profundizaba en el costado psicológico del ser humano ante tantos cambios inesperados y en cómo el hombre tiene que lidiar con estos.
En tan sólo cuatro años, Wells había escrito cuatro novelas inolvidables: "La guerra de los mundos", "El hombre invisible", "La máquina del tiempo" y "La isla del Dr. Moreau", lo que demuestra su poderío narrativo que perdura aún hasta nuestros días.
"La Guerra de los Mundos" no es solamente un libro sobre la invasión de la Tierra a partir de la llegada de los marcianos. Tiene muchos elementos más que la hace una novela muy entretenida para ser tan corta y, como comentara anteriormente, nos muestra otro costado: el de la reacción del hombre ante la pérdida de su libertad.
A lo largo de la historia, hemos conocido acerca de las distintas invasiones y en todas ellas el patrón común es precisamente ese, el de la libertad perdida. Usualmente pondemos el ojo en el vencedor, pero no prestamos atención al vencido o dominado y en cómo influye en éste el hecho de ser sometido en todos los aspectos.
Es sobre esa faceta en donde Wells ahonda el desarrollo de su novela, porque para ser sinceros, si reemplazamos a los habitantes de la tierra, por ejemplo con un ejemplo cualquiera, por los polacos, luego de la invasión nazi en 1939 a Polonia, veremos que ese sufrimiento es similar al que nos cuenta el narrador de esta historia.
La opresión que viven los habitantes de la Tierra puede compararse a la de este pueblo o a cualquiera que haya experimentado un suceso similar.
Para ello y a la par de lo que sucede con la caída de los distintos cilindros a Inglaterra, Wells comienza a relatarnos las reacciones de los hombres que sufren el asedio y de cómo va esto trastocando su vida.
Durante el transcurso de la novela nos encontramos con grandes diferencias entre los seres humanos como sucede entre el narrador y el cura y también con el artillero. Estas distintas maneras de pensar nos llevan a un contrapunto interesante.
En primer lugar descubrimos que insólitamente la falta de fe y esperanza repercute totalmente en el cura, que es casualmente quien por su posición ante precisamente esa fe es quien más debe reconfortar al débil. En este caso no funciona y creo que se debe a una crítica que Wells entabla hacia la Iglesia como constitución.
Desconozco si era o no creyente pero pude notar que por momentos el narrador (que es tal vez un Wells encubierto) nos daba una imagen paranoica, frágil y temerosa de alguien que supuestamente debe mostrarnos exactamente lo contrario.
En el caso del artillero, se desarrolla una personalidad completamente opuesta. La de aquellos hombres que bajo la influencia de la invasión a la que están sujetos intentan tomar partido para su beneficio o pactando secretas sumisiones a cambio de una traición a los suyos o en otros casos queriendo intentar una represalia que es imposible llevar a cabo y es ahí en donde el autor pone al descubierto nuestras defectos, ambicione o debilidades como personas.
El punto del artillero es de todas maneras muy válido, pues éste pone de manifiesto que la supervivencia de los seres humanos está ligada directamente a que entendamos que, ante un dominio tan brutal como el que ejercen los marcianos, éstos estarán unidos o dominados. En nosotros está descubrir la verdad.
Un dato interesante que descubrí durante el tramo final de la segunda parte es que los marcianos comienzan a rociar toda la zona con un una nube letal negra, principalmente en la ciudad de Londres que en ese libro equivale a la Nueva York de las películas de Hollywood, y este detalle me recordó a la de la nevada mortal con la que comienza la mítica historia gráfica de Hector Oesterheld en "El Eternauta". Tal vez, a partir de esta novela haya habido algún tipo de inspiración en el autor argentino para desarrollar su historia.
Para finalizar, simplemente dejo una pequeña reflexión e interrogante, ya que sabemos que esto es ficción, que la ficción es justamente la creación de mundos a partir de la realidad, que se han escrito muchos libros sobre el tema y que se filmaron centenares de películas pero, si un día nos despertáramos con la noticia de una invasión extraterrestre...
Tú: ¿cómo reaccionarías?

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.

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.

"I felt no condemnation; yet the memory, static, unprogressive, haunted me. In the silence of the night, with that sense of nearness of God that sometimes comes into the stillness and the darkness, I stood my trial, my only trial, for that moment of wrath and fear."

Hey, I finally get the addition of the rapidly growing red weed that's in one in favorite game of all time, SNES Zombies Ate my Neighbors. These martians weren't hunting cheerleaders though!



While the wording style is eloquent, beautiful, it fails to hold rapt focus. I think the main issue is the story is so distant from characterization and mainly fills itself out by describing everything - martians, their instruments, the lands, the horrors, the pit.

There's a few pieces of dialogue but mainly the lone traveler is kept with the company of his own mind, but still the author tells us little. The character has a wife but little else is known besides his slightly philosophical nature and definite strokes of luck and fortune. He escapes much while others just happen to not make that same fortunate escape.

Being a classic written in another time, the science and plausibility isn't as advanced with its sketching as something today would be -- but it was incredibly inventive, especially for its time period. We've copied this work on art in so many ways since. Originality is something that shines for The war of the worlds - we can only hope to be suitable imitators.

On the surface it is a story about the doom of man when the sky opens to release those vicious Martians - but the author enjoys later telling tales of how the human race is doomed and sort of deserves it because we have doomed others, the earth, and been unmerciful to the land, animals, and those tribes or peoples different from us. Wells raises the point of mankind ruthlessly wiping out others due to greed and savagery, without our current day giving it ample remorseful respect.

Bringing up animals, here is one quote among many that points the same theme out --

"...an inferior animal, a thing that for any passing whim of our masters might be hunted and killed. Perhaps they also prayed confidently to God. Surely, if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity -- pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion."

H.G. Wells keeps the philosophy strong by also taking pains to show that, while the Martians are a horrifying creation we have a right to fear, we ourselves are scary to animals and other races we've conquered.

Does compare the monstrosity of the Martians with mad of how we destroy the world or have taken no mercy in history on previous human tribes. When describing the horrors of the Martians feeding, the author then states, "The bare idea of this is no doubt repulsive to us, but at the same time I think that we should remember how repulsive our carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit."

An interesting concept - especially because of the radio forecast that led to historic panic - and the creativity of its times. On the downside, the lack of characterization gives a lack of attachment for the reader other than sci-fi colored curiosity. Description only stays interesting up to a point.

I've seen that some find the ending anti-climactic, but I loved it. It's fitting, makes reasonable sense, was happy in its way, horrible in its way, suiting in its way.

"He had swept it out of existence, it seemed, without any provocation, as a boy might crush an ant hill, in the mere wantonness of power."

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.