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    The War of the Worlds (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
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    The War of the Worlds (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
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    The War of the Worlds (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    Ebook307 pages4 hours

    The War of the Worlds (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

    By H. G. Wells and Alfred Mac Adam

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
    • Biographies of the authors
    • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
    • Footnotes and endnotes
    • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
    • Comments by other famous authors
    • Study questions to challenge the readers viewpoints and expectations
    • Bibliographies for further reading
    • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each readers understanding of these enduring works.

    On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles terrified American radio listeners by describing a Martian invasion of Earth in a broadcast that became legendary. Forty years earlier, H. G. Wells had first penned the story: The War of the Worlds, a science-fiction classic that endures in our collective subconscious.

    Deeply concerned with the welfare of contemporary society, Wells wrote his novel of interplanetary conflict in anticipation of war in Europe, and in it he predicted the technological savagery of twentieth century warfare. Playing expertly on worldwide security fears, The War of the Worlds grips readers with its conviction that invasion can happen anytime, anywhere—even in our own backyard.

    Alfred Mac Adam teaches literature at Barnard College-Columbia University. He is a translator and art critic. He also wrote the notes and introduction to the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Wells’s The Time Machine and The Invisible Man.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarnes & Noble Classics
    Release dateJun 1, 2009
    ISBN9781411433465
    Unavailable
    The War of the Worlds (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    Author

    H. G. Wells

    H.G. Wells is considered by many to be the father of science fiction. He was the author of numerous classics such as The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The War of the Worlds, and many more. 

    Read more from H. G. Wells

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    Reviews for The War of the Worlds (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

    4/5

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    • 2/5
      “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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      War of the Worlds is a book that tells the story of a man, the narrator, and his plight through England in order to find his wife after an alien attack on the world. I enjoyed the book very much, especially the characters. They were very developed, considering that there were a few reoccurring ones. I also liked the author’s attention to detail. The settings were really well put together. I disliked the lack of action. One would think that a book about Martians attacking would be violent, but it wasn’t. The characters in the book were the most likable part. I thought that they were very well developed. The book was an average length, and there were only five or six important and reoccurring characters, so it is no wonder that they were very developed and understood characters. The main character, who also narrates the story, is a very detailed character, because it is easy to see his goal throughout the story, and figure out his personality. He is a caring person, but will only do what he needs to survive. Another thing that I liked was the very detailed descriptions. The author made the settings very clear and easy to picture. The settings didn’t change much, like the characters, so they were familiar, and easy to understand what was going on at the time. Everything that happened in the book was very precise with the amount of detail given by the author. There were very few issues with the details. I liked the amount of detail given by HG Wells a lot. The lack of action was a dislike of mine. The story of a Martian attack seems like there would be a lot of action, but there wasn’t. It did leave room for more detail, but that was somewhat less important with not as much happening in the well described locations. It made the book, which was relatively short seem very long and less engaging. There wasn’t even that much dialogue, so not much was happening. Where there was action, it was in very quick short bursts, and was hard to follow, making the pace very inconsistent, and not as enjoyable. War of the Worlds is an excellent book. Though it has a slow pace, with few fast parts, the characters and details make it an extraordinary book. It is a good book for a committed reader, because it is not an action-packed book as the title implies. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
    • 5/5
      Pods hit Earth from Mars. Aliens begin there siege on mankind , using super advanced weaponry and battle techniques, it seems improbable humans will survive. Follow this first person narrative of a professor who witnesses the war of the worlds.Great classic story. H. G. Wells was a brilliant man and very creative writer. If you put this book into the context of the time it was written it's amazing how accurate he was with his predictions of future technologies. Written in 1897 he was allready imagining flame-throwers, space pods, bio-warfare and robots. Amazing!
    • 4/5
      As a story, this book still holds up as a good read. I particularly liked the descriptions of the martian machines and thought how much more frightening these were then any of the movie versions that have followed. This is a classic in the best since of the word, the story is good and competently told with some very good writing, particularly some great descriptions of the aftermath of a devastating and utterly alien event.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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).
    • 2/5
      A moderately interesting tale of marsian invasion of earth.
    • 2/5

      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.

    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      One of the books that set the foundation for later science-fiction novels, War of the Worlds is a tale of a Martian invasion of Earth. The book is split into two sections, the first titled The Coming of the Martians and the second The Earth Under the Martians. For a book that is only 200 pages long, it took me a long time to get into it. All throughout the first part of the novel I kept thinking "yes, okay, the Martians are frightening and literally bloodthirsty, the protagonist has been separated from his wife and home and the whole of England is being destroyed, but why don't I care?" It seemed to me that Wells never makes you feel anything for the protagonist, nor his brother, who features prominently in the story and whose "adventures" bored me to death. It is also perhaps a mark of of the age I grew up in that I didn't even wince while reading the same gory descriptions of disembodied human parts, burning buildings and cadavers that shocked Wells's readers in the 19th century. However, after reading half of the novel I finally stopped expecting character development and stopped hoping the protagonist's ordeal would move me. For I realized that the narrator is not, in fact, the real protagonist of this book. The real protagonist here is the whole of humanity and Wells is excellent at exposing and ridiculing the folly of the human race. For me, The War of the Worlds is best read as a satire on Victorian culture. First of all Wells critiques imperialism and colonialism in a very poignant way. Thus, the same British Empire that is constantly invading other countries is now being invaded by a more powerful race that merely wants to expand its territory and pays no regard to human lives. The invasion literature of the time that wants Britain attacked by a foreign force (typically Germany) is also ridiculed when Britain is in fact attacked by aliens. Furthermore, Wells mocks his contemporaries for still clinging obsessively to religion, after proofs to the contrary offered by Darwin's theories and by the (then) recent developments in geology, anthropology, astronomy and other sciences. In the book, a clergyman who considers the coming of the Martians to be the biblical Armageddon and prays for God to save humanity is presented as mentally disturbed and is, eventually, punished for his outdated views. Wells' message is more than obvious. The Martians are never presented as mysterious, supernatural beings that no one understands. In fact the detailed description of their anatomy and their possible evolution process was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting parts of the novel. Never before have the words "science-fiction" been more aptly used to describe a book. The War of the Worlds is exactly that - a book in which all the ideas are based on actual scientific theories enriched by Wells's imagination.Conclusion? The second part is much better than the first one; once you accept that you're not gonna care whether the narrator reunites with his wife or not and instead try to observe how the entire human race reacts to the invasion, the book can only get better.
    • 4/5
      Review I had to write for class:Life on Mars has become difficult for the Martians. Having sucked their planet dry, they’ve focused on the lush, undefended nineteenth-century Earth as their next home in the galaxy. Humanity is completely unprepared for an alien invasion – no mass communication, no disaster plans, nothing. The people of Earth watch in confusion and horror as strange metallic cylinders fall from the heavens. Mechanical monsters kill indiscriminately and swarm over the countryside. The reader follows one man’s struggle to stay alive as the world collapses around him. Will the human race be able to defend itself against the Martians superior technologies such as the heat ray and poisonous clouds, or are they doomed to be enslaved by the marauding invaders? H.G. Wells introduced the world to such a scenario with War of the Worlds, creating a genre and a vision of life in the universe that impacts science and entertainment even today.What I really thought:Those of you that know me, know that I really dig sci-fi in screen form. I’ve never really been able to get into Sci-fi novels…maybe I’m just dazzled by the special effects. Who knows?Anyway, I did enjoy War of the Worlds. I had a hard time wrapping some parts of it around my mind – for example, an alien invasion in a world without mass communication. Nobody knew what was going on. People were crawling up to the spacecraft and kicking it, people were living normal lives just outside the reach of the heat rays. If this were to happen nowadays…well, you know what would happen. Skyfox 9 and Captain Bobby Ratliff would be circling the area, the Powers That Be would be analyzing what the economic and financial effects of the invasion would be – or perhaps the world would just dissolve into a haze of frenzied panic and we’d all freak out and look to our leaders for guidance – and then Bush would be able to get his stupid Social Security plan passed.Now I’m just ranting. But you know what I mean? Something that happens on a global scale without global communication – it’s hard to fathom nowadays. I was impressed by a lot of other things in this book too – but this is the aspect that will stick in my memory.
    • 5/5
      War of the Worlds is a classic horror story. It is also the basis for most science-fiction as science answers every question the book poses. The 2005 movie was a good representation of the book. Also, I found a copy of Orsen Wells' 1930s recording of War of the Worlds, which is fun to listen to at night.
    • 5/5
      One of the greatest science fiction novels of all time.
    • 4/5
      Last year I read [The Island of Dr. Moreau] and was not at all enthused, so I undertook this with a bit of trepidation. Moreau made me feel vaguely ill and did not help me understand Wells' distinction as "the father of science fiction" at all. This book helped me understand it on several levels and revived my interest in the classics of the scifi genre.My edition (the Signet Classics version that mooched) had an afterword by Isaac Asimov, which besides being wonderfully written, helped put the book into context, which allowed me to drain even more meaning from the book that I already had. Unlike in Moreau, I saw where Wells' observations of humanity and philosophical leanings came in. His descriptions of chaos brought on by the Martian's terror and destruction could have been true in the late 1800's, the 1950's, or now. The ideas of men with whom the narrator spoke would be the same no matter what decade they were in. And while the science may have been proven to be false, the idea of otherworldly invasion is certainly still seen as terrifying.Asimov's afterword further brought up the parallels of the conquering European colonizers and the crushing Martian overlords. While this did not occur to me while reading the novel, it allowed me to drain a little more insight from Wells' head, which was a pleasure. It also allowed to further appreciate the timelessness of some of Wells' passages, particularly the "for neither do men live nor die in vain", as well as the strongest opening of any novel I've read this year.While Moreau did not age particularly well, I believe [The War of the Worlds] will continue to be easy to read no matter how many years pass and new scifi novels are written. I recommend it to all scifi fans as a way to understand the basis of the genre and develop an appreciation for the timelessness of certain novels (which I find a particular downfall with many scifi novels).
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      I was sure I’d read The War of the Worlds, because it’s one of those really famous and perpetually-referenced works of fiction that eventually just seeps into your brain by osmosis. I’m pretty sure I did read an abridged version in primary school, and I’ve read the excellent 2006 graphic novel Dark Horse put out, and I’ve seen the (greatly underrated) 2005 Spielberg film, and I’ve read Christopher Priest’s bizarre mash-up of it in The Space Machine. I know the plot pretty much off by heart. So it was with surprise that I recently realised I’d never actually read the original, unabridged novel.The Martians invade England, lay waste to the land with their tripod battle machines and deadly heat-ray, scatter the British military before them, and eventually die because of Terran bacteria. That’s the synopsis that everybody knows. But even if you think you know this story, it’s well worth reading, because unlike most 19th century classics it’s an absolute cracker of a book.One of the things I was most impressed by was Wells’ ability to develop a dreadful suspense, even though I knew precisely what was coming – and, you know, I’m sure even the readers at the time figured it out from the title. The War of the Worlds begins on a beautiful midsummer night in the London commuter town of Woking, amidst the utterly ordinary environment of the Victorian suburbs. (Incidentally, I enjoyed how the summer itself seemed a visceral part of the events – what is it about apocalyptic stories and summer? The Stand and the TV series The Walking Dead come to mind.) Strange conflagrations are witnessed by astronomers on the surface of Mars, and shortly afterwards, a falling star lands on the common near Woking. This moment in time – the beautifully written warm twilight of a Friday evening – is merely the beginning of a terrible destruction that will be wrought upon southern England.Alien invasion stories are a dime a dozen these days, but when Wells first wrote The War of the Worlds it was something completely new: one of the first hard science fiction novels, challenging notions about British (and indeed human) supremacy over the planet, and depicting the reactions of the characters to terrible events above and beyond them with stunning clarity. One the one hand, it’s fascinating to see how differently a apocalyptic event would have been a century ago, chiefly in how slowly the news travels – even the narrator remarks on how strange it is, a few hours after the first Martians incinerate dozens of people at the first landing site, for him to stumble terrified back into Woking and find that only a few miles away people are still going about their business. Likewise, the true gravity of the situation is slow to descend upon the citizens of the capital, chiefly because “the majority of people in London do not read Sunday papers.”Yet on the other hand, when the reality of the danger does sink in, Wells’ description of the panicked evacuation of six million people from London – one of the finest scenes in the novel – is weirdly modern. One might have expected a Victorian writer to fill it with acts of bravery, chivalry and decorum, but instead we see an ugly mass of people trampling over each other in their haste to escape.Had the Martians aimed only at destruction, they might on Monday have annihilated the entire population of London, as it spread itself slowly through the home counties. Not only along the road through Barnet, but also through Edgware and Waltham Abbey, and along the roads eastward to Southend and Shoeburyness, and south of the Thames to Deal and Broadstairs, poured the same frantic rout. If one could have hung that June morning in a balloon in the blazing blue above London every northward and eastward road running out of the tangled maze of streets would have seemed stippled black with the streaming fugitives, each dot a human agony of terror and physical distress. I have set forth at length in the last chapter my brother’s account of the road through Chipping Barnet, in order that my readers may realise how that swarming of black dots appeared to one of those concerned. Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. The legendary hosts of Goths and Huns, the hugest armies Asia has ever seen, would have been but a drop in that current. And this was no disciplined march; it was a stampede–a stampede gigantic and terrible–without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of civilisation, of the massacre of mankind.The various acts of panicked violence which follow are, to use the word again, modern – a realistic point of view I would have expected from a mid-century writer, not a Victorian. It’s enthralling stuff.It’s also an eerie book to read from a modern perspective, not least of all as we approach the centenary of World War I. That war was still sixteen years distant when The War of the Worlds was released, but it’s uncanny how many things Wells accurately predicted: the total warfare, the sacking of towns and cities, the armoured fighting machines, and – most disturbing of all – the indiscriminate use of chemical weapons. On the other hand, something a lot of people don’t know about The War of the Worlds is that in Wells’ fictional universe, there are actually humans living alongside the Martians on Mars, albeit as slaves and food sources. This is only mentioned once, and it’s hard to tell whether it’s poetic license on Wells’ part or whether he thought that might be a genuine scientific possibility. Either way, it seems odd compared to how prescient the rest of the book was.It’s hard to overstate just how much of an impact this novel had on the rest of the century’s science fiction. Even the final chapters, as the narrator walks across a deserted London – a scene that feels almost cinematic in its use of noise and silence – no doubt influenced the opening of John Wyndham’s classic The Day of the Triffids, which in turn was the inspiration for the film 28 Days Later, and so on and so forth. And I can’t stress enough just how madly, horribly inventive and compelling every part of this book is: the crowd gathered around the first cylinder at sunset on a hot summer’s day, the image of a Martian tripod striding down the Thames past the Houses of Parliament, the panicked flight of millions of Londoners, the devastated countryside choked with alien red weed, the derelict tripod on Primrose Hill dripping with “lank shreds of brown.” The War of the Worlds is an absolute classic of literature, and if you think you know the story and don’t need to read the book, think again. And, of course, it’s in the public domain and you can read it for free, so there’s no excuse not to.
    • 5/5
      This is a classic that anyone even slightly interested in SF should read. Don't read it completely literally. Keep in mind the themes that it is espousing in its dated, stilted manner. It's short & has spawned so many spin-offs & hype that ignorance of what Wells actually wrote is a pity. There is a lot more to this novel than just first alien contact or apocalypse. The man(soldier)-in-the-street POV & our salvation inspire a lot of thought even today - make that especially today. Yes, parts are dated, but overall it's an amazingly enduring story that shows our racial egotism off for what it is.
    • 3/5
      A tale of two halves. An excellent, attention-grabbing opening which gradually deteriorates into an uninteresting and contrived mess made for skimming.

      What I loved:

      tantalizing foreshadowing
      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.

      the arrogance of man believing he is alone in the universe
      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.

      realistic emotional responses ranging from terror, panic and post-traumatic stress from witnessing the horrors of war to determined attempts to ignore and deny this frightening new reality
      “It’s a movin’,” he said to me as he passed; “a-screwin’, and a-screwin’ out. I don’t like it . I’m a-goin’ ’ome, I am.”

      Suddenly , like a thing falling upon me from without, came— fear. With an effort I turned and began a stumbling run through the heather. The fear I felt was no rational fear, but a panic terror not only of the Martians, but of the dusk and stillness all about me. Such an extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that I ran weeping silently as a child might do.

      At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all.

      intimate brushes with death

      I staggered through the leaping, hissing water towards the shore. Had my foot stumbled, it would have been the end.

      graphic imagery
      It was as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire. Then, by the light of their own destruction, I saw them staggering and falling, and their supporters turning to run.

      ...enormous volume of heavy, inky vapour, coiling and pouring upward in a huge and ebony cumulus cloud, a gaseous hill that sank and spread itself slowly over the surrounding country. And the touch of that vapour, the inhaling of its pungent wisps, was death to all that breathes.

      They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh living blood of other creatures, and injected it into their own veins.

      The man was running away with the rest, and selling his papers for a shilling each as he ran— a grotesque mingling of profit and panic.

      I put out my hand and felt the meat chopper hanging to the wall. In a flash I was after him. I was fierce with fear. Before he was halfway across the kitchen I had overtaken him. With one last touch of humanity I turned the blade back and struck him with the butt. He went headlong forward and lay stretched on the ground. I stumbled over him and stood panting. He lay still.

      men clutching at religion
      “Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done? The morning service was over, I was walking through the roads to clear my brain for the afternoon, and then— fire, earthquake, death! As if it were Sodom and Gomorrah! All our work undone, all the work— What are these Martians?”

      ...

      “Be a man!” said I. “You are scared out of your wits! What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think God had exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent.”

      Hahaha!


      cold hard comparisons between the relationship between Martians and man and man and the animals
      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.


      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.

      “It’s bows and arrows against the lightning, anyhow,” said the artilleryman.

      Did they grasp that we in our millions were organised, disciplined, working together? Or did they interpret our spurts of fire, the sudden stinging of our shells, our steady investment of their encampment, as we should the furious unanimity of onslaught in a disturbed hive of bees? Did they dream they might exterminate us?

      “This isn’t a war,” said the artilleryman. “It never was a war, any more than there’s war between man and ants.”

      the artilleryman's postulating on the post-apocalyptic rebuilding of society
      And we form a band— able-bodied, clean-minded men. We’re not going to pick up any rubbish that drifts in. Weaklings go out again.”

      ...

      Able-bodied, clean-minded women we want also— mothers and teachers. No lackadaisical ladies—no blasted rolling eyes. We can’t have any weak or silly. Life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They ought to die. They ought to be willing to die. It’s a sort of disloyalty , after all, to live and taint the race.

      actual science in this science fiction
      In particular I laid stress on the gravitational difficulty. On the surface of the earth the force of gravity is three times what it is on the surface of Mars. A Martian, therefore, would weigh three times more than on Mars, albeit his muscular strength would be the same. His own body would be a cope of lead to him.

      Apparently the vegetable kingdom in Mars, instead of having green for a dominant colour, is of a vivid blood-red tint. At any rate, the seeds which the Martians (intentionally or accidentally) brought with them gave rise in all cases to red-coloured growths. Only that known popularly as the red weed, however, gained any footing in competition with terrestrial forms.

      As you can probably tell, all of these things I highlighted with a fervor on my Kindle.

      What I didn't appreciate was the contrived and rather dull nature of the latter half of the story, most of which I skimmed. Meeting the artilleryman again miles and days away from where and when they first met - the odds of that are infinitesimal, the aliens abruptly dying from Earth's alien bacteria, the narrator's wife not only surviving but is reunited with her husband. And why was the narrator's brother's point of view given? We never see the brothers together. He's just a stranger to us as the reader.

      However, I did raise my eyebrows at these unintentional funnies:

      'cockchafer' - apparently this is a beetle but that's not what came to mind when I saw it.

      His landlady came to the door, loosely wrapped in dressing gown and shawl; her husband followed ejaculating.

      Er, what? That's a bit spicy.



      I was initially impressed by this classic. Unfortunately the ending left me disappointed.
    • 3/5
      Interesting, but I prefer character-driven pieces.
    • 4/5
      One of the earliest stories of conflict between man and extraterrestrial beings, written in 1898, this is a pretty extraordinary book. The narrator is unnamed, a writer of philosophy and in this story he expresses various points of philosophy. This book has never gone out of print and has remained popular. That is pretty extraordinary, too. This story is not big on characters and none of them have names. It is written as a factual telling of invasion and rule by Martians. This book presents science facts, technology and ecological points in its telling. Another theme is apocalypse. People feared the end of the age as 1899 drew closer. There is a mix of Christianity and such constructs as natural selection/Darwinism. At one point, it felt the narrator’s experience was like the experience of Noah disembarking the Ark to a world of destruction and carian with carian birds eating the dead. While there seems to be Christian themes in the book there is the characterization of the curate’s emotional weakness and self centeredness that resulted in the need to kill him (natural selection).
    • 5/5
      Martians attack!If you somehow have remained ignorant of the details of this classic story, be aware that there are major spoilers in this review.I have only recently started reading the works of H. G. Wells, and I'm sorry I waited so long. We tend to assume that books written over 100 years ago will be difficult reads, filled with convoluted sentences, arcane words and obtuse themes. But Wells is actually a simple, straightforward and highly evocative writer. I thought The Time Machine was moody and poetic. Surprisingly, The War of the Worlds was scary, suspenseful and humbling.The basic story should be familiar to most from the famous radio and movie adaptations. Martians unexpectedly arrive on Earth in cylindrical spaceships and quickly construct huge, three-legged war machines that immediately lay waste to the country around them. Wells' descriptions of the tripods looming of the smoke, hunting the comparatively tiny humans with heat rays and poisonous gas, are chilling. Wells describes the panic that overtakes London so precisely that the reader feels like one of the fleeing mob. In one of the more horrifying scenes, the unnamed narrator -- hiding in the basement of a destroyed house -- watches the Martians just outside as they drain and ingest the blood of their captives. Modern horror has to work hard to be this scary.In the face of overwhelmingly superior technology, man is reduced to a helpless, panicked animal. People are compared to ants scurrying in the road or to rabbits run to ground. Just a few days after the Martians land, civilization is effectively over. This is no feel-good Independence Day-type story. People don't rise up to save the day. The most frightening aspect of this novel is that it lays bare how truly powerless we are.Of course, the Martians are defeated by an even tinier foe: bacteria against which they have developed no immunology. While this development is something of a deus ex machina, the ending is still perfectly plausible. But will humankind learn from this experience? That remains to be seen.Reading the science fiction classics (2011).
    • 5/5
      There is a reason this is a classic. It is evocative and thought provoking. Read the book and then listen to the radio broadcast. You'll never be quite the same.
    • 5/5
      One of my favourite books, and therefore, I thought, worthy of my first review on LibraryThing. Written at a time when books dealing with an invasion of Britain were popular, whether by Germans (such as in the BATTLE OF DORKING), French or aliens, War of the Worlds tells the story of an alien invasion with brilliant detail and vivid descriptions. When strange gases are spotted appearing from Mars, few suspect that these are the launches of alien orbs, heading for Earth. A year later, they impact near Horsell, England and the creatures emerge from their shells. A truly fantastical read, truly unputdownable.
    • 4/5
      Wells does an amazing job of making the alien invasion sound so very realistic, using a precise semiscientific tone which reminds one of the later work of H. P. Lovecraft. His reference to imaginary texts is particularly apt for the process. I thought I knew all about the book since I knew the basic plotline, but it was still a very interesting read -- and a good example of Lovecraft's "literature of cosmic fear," that fear which comes about when humanity realizes its insignificance in the universe. This only falls apart at the very end. Wells seems to have been particularly prophetic in his descriptions of poison gas, more than a decade before chlorine was used in World War I. The social commentary was also very interesting -- it is clear that his Martians are exactly what he can see men becoming. I can see parallels with The Time Traveller.
    • 4/5
      Very easy to read and exceptionally well written. This is a novel that each generation can take something different from. I liked the descriptions of many of the Victorians as the spaceships came from the sky – such a solid British image of “they won’t make me leave home”. An image I could vividly imagine. It’s a short read that has packed a lot into it. Words aren’t wasted, which is why it is the length it is. I’m sure HG Wells could easily have added more description but it wasn’t necessary. A fabulous story.
    • 4/5
      While I have had many exposures to this sort of story, this is the first time I've gotten around to reading the original alien invasion novel. Greatly enjoyed it. The contrast over time between this Victorian novel and later stories in the details (rather than the overarching aspects) made it even more interesting. I preferred it to the 1930's broadcast. One flaw that did annoy me was the way the narrator's brother appeared and vanished with no explanation from the narrative.