Novel
The War of the Worlds
H. G. Wells · 1898
Opening lines
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 […]
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
For ten nights, astronomers see jets of flame leaping from Mars. Then a cylinder falls on a common in Surrey, near Woking. The crowd gathers around the pit while it slowly unscrews from the inside. A delegation sets off to meet it with a white flag; a heat-ray sweeps it away. A second cylinder falls the following night, then others. The narrator puts his wife in safety with cousins at Leatherhead, then sets off again in the night to return the borrowed cart, and also to see what happens next.
Context
The idea came from the author's brother, Frank, who asked him during a walk in Surrey what would happen if beings from another planet suddenly fell from the sky; the book is dedicated to him as the shaping of his idea. They had perhaps spoken, the author recalled, of the discovery of Tasmania by Europeans, and the novel recalls that the Tasmanians were exterminated within fifty years. The author set the invasion around Woking, where he lived, and related that he cycled round the places he intended for his Martians. The story appeared in 1897 in Pearson's Magazine and in the American Cosmopolitan, then in volume form in 1898.
Who it is for
A short novel, in the first person, in two books; translated into French as early as 1900 and retranslated in 2024 and in 2026.
Prizes and reception
It established the story of extraterrestrial invasion, and its 1938 radio adaptation caused a sensation in the United States.
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