5/5 for Creativity, Fear, and Panic

4/5 Overall due to pace and style of writing (time period differences)

So the saying usually goes “ curiosity killed the cat.” In this story, it’s curiosity killed the humans who were all rushing to see the martian cylinders! I know, I know! It doesn’t quite have the same ring!

Anyway, this is a story that strongly boasts the theme -- survival of the fittest and is most definitely a bold one of its time. Imagine martian invaders appearing suddenly in your town? What would you do? Would you approach them? Hide? Escape? Fight? Freeze up? And imagine it’s the end of the world. All insanity has broken loose. Everyone has lost complete basic sense, and most everyone is only out to help themselves. Then imagine reading this story in its original time of publication! How terrifying it must have been to have been introduced to such bold and extreme occurrences through a story.

Jumping ahead…..

THE DESCRIPTION OF THE ALIENS:
Damn, these aliens have it made! They are the ultimate villains. They have intelligence that goes way beyond our humanly capabilities because they have no petty needs like we do. They don’t require sleep or food. They are nonstop productive. They don’t get sick. There is no obsession with sex. They even have highly intelligent ways of communication similar to telepathy that results in instant information. Mind-blowing!

It really makes you stop and wonder if we really are the only intelligent species of life out here in the universe. I feel a shiver just writing this. It’s hopeful thinking on my part though as I travel through daily life thinking how hopelessly flawed the human race is and how we are most likely the superior race of the universe.

BACK TO THE STORY:
Due to it being written so long ago, the story did have its downfalls naturally. It drug out a bit in parts. It was also detached and impersonal as there was just a narrator who had a wife and very few specific characters involved or mentioned. The narrator also made some pretty foolish and questionable decisions along the way. But looking back overall, I take all that as being the beauty of the story. Making it distant and cold just enhanced the terror. It’s as if you are watching all this happen from high above.

But don’t get me wrong, there were some surprisingly memorable quotes of which I have pasted below to share. And I’m super glad I read the book finally to check off my list, and I’m very much looking forward to watching the film adaptation starring Tom Cruise. He never disappoints in his actions films.

Favorite quotes:

“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.”

“The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence.”

“..the Martians seemed in solitary possession of the darkling night, lit only as it was by the slender moon, the stars, the afterglow of the daylight..”

"Micro-organisms, which cause so much disease and pain on earth, have either never appeared upon Mars or Martian sanitary science eliminated them ages ago. A hundred diseases, all the fevers and contagions of human life, consumption, cancers, tumours and such morbidities, never enter the scheme of their life."

DNF
Once again I find myself in the minority.

WEARISOME

This book left such a bad impression in me that I haven't been able to bring myself to rise the slightest interest to even watch the movie.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The author and narrator were a good fit and the story kept me in its thrall except for one time when my mind began to wonder and the following quote drew me quickly back into the fold:

"I stood staring into the pit and my heart lightened gloriously even as the rising sun struck the world to fire about me with his rays. The pit was still in darkness the mighty engines so great and wonderful in their power and complexity, so unearthly in their tortuous forms rose weird and vague and strange out of the shadows toward the light."

My goodness this is a brilliant book! Despite being one of the early waves of science fiction it is still a beautifully written thrilling read.

While to a modern science fiction reader it may seen like 'speculative fiction' or even 'space opera' due to the (comparative) lack of hard science in the story, I think that for 1897 when it was first published it actually contains a very respectable amount of science. There are astronomy speculations, machinery is described in ways that are pretty detailed and advanced for the day. Mass spectrometery (though not called by that name) is used to describe the metals brought to earth by the Martians and when you consider that this discipline was first introduced 1918-1919, some time after this book was published I think there can be no doubt that H. G. Wells' book is beyond doubt a definite science fiction. In fact Wells was a trained science teacher in his day and had had the noted biologist Huxley as his own teacher. Huxley was an impassioned advocate of Darwinism and his proposed principle of evolution through natural selection. I think it is clear that Huxley inspired H. G. Wells, as evolution and natural selection are evident throughout this book where our protagonist theorises about the process of evolution which may have reduced the Martians to enfeebled bodies reliant on machinery as well as in the final defeat of the Martians by bacteria to which they had no developed immunity.

The writing style is lovely, smooth beautiful literature, descriptive of both the invasion, the social implications and the inner life of our unnamed, first person narrator. Within the context of invasion literature, a type of writing that has always been and remains popular - this novel stands out for it's time in how little it has dated. Dating is a problem in older books, because the author brings his culture with him into the novel, so H. G. Wells has dated a little in his lack of female lead characters, but beyond that I would say it has not dated at all. In fact, as a novel set in a historical time frame it has not even dated in the matter of gender - in the era the women would have been rushed to safety, leading our protagonist to struggle along as he does. In all other ways it is so skillfully written that it comes across as almost contemporary, much more so than some more recently written science fiction.

At the end of the day it is the skillful writing and delightful narrative that make this a joy to read - as much as I love the science fiction invasion theme. It is in the descriptions of abandoned, ruined London lying eerily quite under the terror of the Martians and the chocking red weed - this is so evocative and lyrical that I feel ashamed it has been so long since I read this novel. Brilliant, way ahead of it's time and a pure delight to read in every paragraph.

For Australian readers out there there is an story behind the book; H. G. Wells claimed that the plot came to him during a discussion with his brother on the genocide (at the time considered a complete genocide) practiced by British imperial forces on the indigenous Tasmanians. What would happen, he wondered, if Martians did to Britain what the British had done to the Tasmanians? Partly because of this acknowledged source, this novel (considered a 'romance' in it's time) can be considered a criticism of British imperialism, among other things.

One of the great classic horror stories. I remember reading this as a child and being terrified. Ahead of its time and thrilling.

In fiction, the fate of the successful innovator is seldom a happy one; the writer who invents an original plot or fresh theme may seem predictable, even shallow, to later readers, once that plot or theme—appropriated by scores of imitators—no longer shines like new. So it is with H.G. Wells and his The War of the Worlds (1897). Invading creatures from outer space became a cliché of “golden age” science fiction, and a double-cliche after the drive-in movies of the ‘50’s. H.G.’s “bug-eyed monsters” no longer chill us as they did the thrilled readers of more than a hundred years ago.

That’s not H.G. Wells fault, though, for they are certainly bad-ass “bug-eyed monsters,” as “bug-eyed monsters” go. Bear-sized land-octopi with a circle of little mouth-tentacles (shades of Cthulhu!), they make their way around England in walking tanks (tripodal fighting machines equipped with a deadly heat-ray and an even deadlier cloud of black gas), sustaining themselves by draining the blood from any available human (or—in a pinch—a sheep or two) while emitting strange whistles of delight.

Still, scary stuff like this got old a long time ago, and I found myself bored with the whole monster invasion thing (as I suspect you might too). But then I paused, dipped a bit into literary history, and soon realized that The War of the Worlds was a more interesting work than I had suspected.

Ever since the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, dozens of English novels had been written under the umbrella of the “invasion literature” genre, beginning with Chesney’s The Battle of Dorking (1871), which featured a German invasion of England. The name of the invading country varied in these books—often Germany, sometimes France—but all the novels tended to feature surprise attacks, the devastation of Southern England (including London), and the inadequacy of English military preparedness. By the time Wells published his short novel in 1897, the genre of “invasion literature” had prepared an enthusiastic audience for his books.

Of course Wells enjoyed the invasion genre, and thought that the addition of Martians would “up the ante,” making The War of the Worlds the invasion novel to end all invasion novels. But I believe his intentions were more complex and richer than this.

I believe that what Wells admired most about the invasion genre was that it shattered the complacency of the English middle class, demonstrated that not only the horrors but—perhaps worse—the profound disruptions of war were possible even here, here at the heart of the Empire: the destruction of villages, the separation of families, the forced movement of whole populations. The problem with the invasion genre, though, was that its villains were too specific, too localized, too susceptible to British dislike of the Hun, mistrust of the Frog. Such parochial prejudices diminished the profound experience of disruption.

But what if the invading forces were not men at all, but beings from another planet, organisms that did not look or act like men? If so, then the writer could use the genre’s images of dislocation and disruption—the burning houses, the victims of a black gas, the horde of Londoners fleeing in terror—to say something about the vulnerability of the human race itself, a race all too convinced of their own imperial destiny.

I’ll end with this passage in which the principal narrator, who has just experienced the demolition of his hiding place and the death of his only companion (a selfish, vexatious, half-mad curate) looks out upon a landscape transformed by Martian war.

n  For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of men, yet one that the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly confronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house. I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an animal among the animals, under the Martian heel. With us it would be as with them, to lurk and watch, to run and hide; the fear and empire of man had passed away.n

h.g. wells vs writing sexist, racist garbage.

Na, das ging zum Ende hin jetzt hopp la hopp.
In der zweiten Hälfte hätte sich Herr Wells noch etwas mehr austoben dürfen. 100 Seiten mehr bitte!
Übrigens ist Zeitreisen aus beschriebenen Gründen ebenso nicht empfehlenswert. Was man sich da alles einfangen kann….

من روائع هـ. ج. ويلز
مختلفه عن الفيلم كتير تفاصيل كتير جدااااااااااا احداث في منتهي الروعه

عبقريييييييه الروايه دي وكعادة الكاتب ديما يبهرني بطريقة تفكيره التقدميه واللي سابقه الفتره الزمنيه اللى كان فيها بمسافات طويله
عنده دايما خلفيه علميه عن كل موضوع بيكتب عنه زي رواية آلة الزمن اللى قرأتها ليه من فتره طويله وكانت اول كتاب اقرأه لويلز

وصف دقيق لشكل الآلات الخاصه بالمريخيين لدرجة اني بقيت مش قادره اتخيل المنظر دا والتفاصيل دي كلها في الفتره اللى هو فيها سنة 1898
الروايه مكونه من كتابين او جزئين الاول اسمه قدوم المريخيين والثاني اسمه الأرض في قبضة المريخيين

شخصية البطل هو كاتب المفترض معروف لم يقم بذكر اسمه يصف لنا البطل علي لسانه وفي كتابه ما حدث بالتفصيل من بداية رؤيته للمريخيين عند اول هبوط ليهم حتي سيطرة المريخيين علي الارض وقتلهم كل ما يقابلهم من كائنات حيه ومحاولاته للوصول لزوجته اللي وصلها عند ابن عمه في مدينه تانيه واعتقاده انها ماتت واعتقادها انه مات

واللي معتقد انه نفس قصة الفيلم بتاع توم كروز لازم يقرأ الروايه لانها وضحت حاجات كتير جداااا ما كانتش واضحه في الفيلم دا اولا وكمان الفتره الزمنيه مختلفه تماما فبالتالي الاحداث هتعتبر مختلفه تماما بما فيهم كمان البطل نفسه واختلافه الشديد عن بطل الفيلم

This was a re-read and it was still as good as the first time.

Well I am thrilled to have read one of the 'granddaddies' of alien invasion books.

It was amazing to read the book that inspired other science fiction writers and movie makers and I was literally naming books and movies that I could see may have been inspired by this great novel. I did a little bit of reading about the novel and the time period it was written in, and it was fascinating to see that the invasion storyline was possibly due to feelings of unease in a time of British imperialism, and may have reflected fears that someone could do to Britain what they were doing to other nations. So many themes and ideas to contemplate in this novel. Interesting stuff!

Uno de mis más vívidos recuerdos de infancia es una proyección de La Guerra de los Mundos (la versión de 1953) a principios de los años 80s, durante una fiesta por el Día del Niño que organizó una agrupación de jóvenes del barrio. Esta fiesta era un clásico anual y todos los años veíamos en Super 8 las mismas películas de Disney, Cupido Motorizado y alguna otra (eran las mismas películas que veíamos en las kermesses escolares por lo que supongo que no habría mucha variedad de títulos). Recuerdo como si fuera hoy el terror que me dió esa película y a mi hermano llorando a los gritos, al igual que varios de los chicos que nos acompañaban. Como soy muy ansiosa, terminé con todas las piernas arañadas y las uñas comidas. Finalmente terminó la película, prendieron las luces y aquí nada ha pasado. Chupetines gratis para todos.
Revisionar la película en la adultez me devolvió un poco la fascinación, y aunque entendí por qué me había aterrorizado, también descubrí que no era para tanto. No voy ni siquiera a dedicarle un párrafo a la versión de 2005 porque no lo merece.
Cuando empecé a leer esta novela después de muchos años en la lista de lecturas pendientes volví a sentir mucho del terror de mi infancia, aunque ahora en forma mucho más tangible. Los marcianos son más terribles y amenazadores que en cualquier versión en fílmico y las escenas de carnicería, hambruna y otros desastres no son aptas para niños. La lectura se me hizo compulsiva- y me volví a comer todas las uñas.
El final pierde la gracia por ya ser archiconocido, pero creo con sinceridad que he leído uno de los mejores libros de ciencia ficción que existen y uno de los mejores que he leído este año. Imagino que en la fecha de su publicación habrá causado una impresión tremenda y no me deja de sorprender la habilidad narrativa de Wells y su increíble inventiva.
Lamentablemente 15 años después de su publicación los horrores de la guerra real habrán disminuido el impacto de este gran libro, pero es el mejor comienzo que pudo haber tenido la literatura de invasiones extraterrestres.