The War of the Worlds [Paperback]

The seminal masterpiece of alien invasion,The War of the Worlds (1898) conjures a terrifying, tentacled race of Martians who devastate the Earth and feed on their human victims while their voracious vegetation, the red weed, spreads over the ruined planet. After the novel’s hero finds himself trapped in what is left of London, despairing at the destruction of human civilization, he discovers that life on Earth is more resilient than he had imagined. Adapted by Orson Welles for his notorious 1938 radio drama and subsequently by many filmmakers, H. G. Wells’s timeless story shows no sign of losing its grip on readers’ imaginations.

“The creations of Mr. Wells . . . belong unreservedly to an age and degree of scientific knowledge far removed from the present, though I will not say entirely beyond the limits of the possible.” —Jules Verne

H. G. WELLS (1866-1946) was a prominent English socialist and pacifist, and a prolific writer in many genres. As the author ofThe War of the Worlds,The Invisible Man,The Island of Dr. Moreau, andThe Time Machine, he is considered a pioneer of science fiction.
 

Book One:
The Coming of the Martians

Chapter 1
The Eve of the War 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; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of sl“+