The War of the Worlds

A drawing of a Martian war machine featured in the book.

The War of the Worlds is a 1898 science fiction book by H. G. Wells. It is about Martians attacking Earth. It has inspired movies including War of the Worlds (2005 movie).

A 1938 radio broadcast version by Orson Welles frightened many people, who thought it was real even though a warning at the start said it was fiction.

Plot

The book is set in Britain at the turn of the 19th century and is told by a first-person narrator. The Martians are jealous of Earth’s more livable environment and launch themselves to Earth in capsules fired from cannons. They easily defeat the human military with their giant war machines, aircraft, poison gas, and heat rays. The narrator travels through the now ruined Britain and encounters invasive alien plants, Martian robots, and the Martians themselves-- who are strange slug-like beings with tentacles who feed on human blood. Eventually, the Martian invasion is stopped when the Martians become infected by Earth germs that they have no immunity to and die.

The War Of The Worlds Media

• The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells. LibriVox recording by Rebecca Dittman. Book 1, Chapter 1.

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  First Martian emerging from the cylinder that had fallen from the sky. Illustration by Henrique Alvim Corrêa for the 1906 edition.

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  The Martians launch a cylinder to start their attack on Earth, illustration by Henrique Alvim Corrêa for the 1906 edition, showing "canals" on Mars.

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  An art installation in Woking depicts a tripod and (out of picture) a Martian cylinder. "The Woking Martian"; Michael Condron, 1998

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  A Canadian postage stamp showing the British Empire at the time of the novel's publication

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  The Battle of Dorking initiated invasion literature.

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  Illustration for “The Crystal Egg” by Frank R. Paul, 1926

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  Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars (cover illustrated by Frank Schoonover)

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  1953 George Pal film adaptation with Martian tripod fighting machines reimagined as manta-ray-like craft that move on three invisible magnetic legs, armed with a cobra-like mounted heat ray