Title page, 1927 Amazing Stories reprint.
The novel is the
first-person narrative of both an unnamed
protagonist in Surrey and of his younger brother in London as southern England is invaded by
Martians. The novel is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction
canon.
The plot has been related to
invasion literature of the time. The novel has been variously interpreted as a commentary on evolutionary theory,
British imperialism,
and generally Victorian superstitions, fears, and prejudices. Wells
said that the plot arose from a discussion with his brother Frank about
the catastrophic effect of the British on
indigenous Tasmanians. What would happen, he wondered, if Martians did to Britain what the British had done to the Tasmanians?
The Tasmanians, however, lacked the lethal pathogens to defeat their
invaders. At the time of publication, it was classified as a
scientific romance, like Wells's earlier novel
The Time Machine.
The War of the Worlds has been both popular (having never
been out of print) and influential, spawning half a dozen feature films,
radio dramas, a record album, various comic book adaptations, a number
of television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors.
It was most memorably dramatised in a
1938 radio programme that allegedly caused public panic among listeners who did not know the Martian invasion was
fiction.
Plot
Yet
across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to
those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and
unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and
surely drew their plans against us.
— H. G. Wells (1898), The War of the Worlds
The Coming of the Martians
The narrative opens by stating that as humans on
Earth busied themselves with their own endeavours during the mid-1890s, aliens on
Mars began plotting an
invasion of Earth because their own resources are dwindling. The Narrator (who is unnamed throughout the novel) is invited to an astronomical
observatory at
Ottershaw where explosions are seen on the surface of the planet
Mars, creating much interest in the scientific community. Months later, a so-called "
meteor" lands on
Horsell Common, near the Narrator's home in
Woking,
Surrey.
He is among the first to discover that the object is an artificial
cylinder that opens, disgorging Martians who are "big" and "greyish"
with "oily brown skin", "the size, perhaps, of a bear", each with "two
large dark-coloured eyes", and lipless "V-shaped mouths" which drip
saliva and are surrounded by two "Gorgon groups of tentacles". The
Narrator finds them "at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and
monstrous".
They emerge briefly, but have difficulty in coping with the Earth's
atmosphere and gravity, and so retreat rapidly into their cylinder.
A human deputation (which includes the astronomer Ogilvy) approaches the cylinder with a
white flag, but the Martians incinerate them and others nearby with a
heat-ray before beginning to assemble their machinery. Military forces arrive that night to surround the common, including
Maxim guns. The population of Woking and the surrounding villages are reassured by the presence of the
British Army. A tense day begins, with much anticipation by the Narrator of military action.
An army of Martian fighting-machines destroying England. (1906)
After heavy firing from the common and damage to the town from the
heat-ray which suddenly erupts in the late afternoon, the Narrator takes
his wife to safety in nearby
Leatherhead,
where his cousin lives, using a rented, two-wheeled horse cart; he then
returns to Woking to return the cart when in the early morning hours, a
violent thunderstorm erupts. On the road during the height of the
storm, he has his first terrifying sight of a fast-moving Martian
fighting-machine; in a panic, he crashes the horse cart, barely escaping
detection. He discovers the Martians have assembled towering
three-legged
"fighting-machines" (tripods), each armed with a heat-ray and a
chemical weapon: the poisonous "
black smoke".
These tripods have wiped out the army units positioned around the
cylinder and attacked and destroyed most of Woking. Taking shelter in
his house, the Narrator sees moving through his garden a fleeing
artilleryman,
who later tells the Narrator of his experiences and mentions that
another cylinder has landed between Woking and Leatherhead, which means
the Narrator is now cut off from his wife. The two try to escape via
Byfleet just after dawn, but are separated at the
Shepperton to Weybridge Ferry during a Martian afternoon attack on
Shepperton.
One of the Martian fighting-machines is brought down in the
River Thames by
artillery as the Narrator and countless others try to cross the river into
Middlesex,
and the Martians retreat to their original crater. This gives the
authorities precious hours to form a defence-line covering London. After
the Martians' temporary repulse, the Narrator is able to float down the
Thames in a boat toward London, stopping at
Walton, where he first encounters the
curate, his companion for the coming weeks.
A Martian fighting-machine battling with HMS Thunder Child (1906)
Towards dusk, the Martians renew their offensive, breaking through the defence-line of
siege guns and field artillery centred on
Richmond Hill and
Kingston Hill
by a widespread bombardment of the black smoke; an exodus of the
population of London begins. This includes the Narrator's younger
brother, a medical student (also unnamed), who flees to the
Essex
coast, after the sudden, panicked, pre-dawn order to evacuate London is
given by the authorities, on a terrifying and harrowing journey of
three days, amongst thousands of similar refugees streaming from London.
The brother encounters Mrs Elphinstone and her younger sister-in-law,
just in time to help them fend off three men who are trying to rob them.
Since Mrs Elphinstone's husband is missing, the three continue on
together.
After a terrifying struggle to cross a streaming mass of refugees on the road at Barnet, they head eastward. Two days later, at
Chelmsford,
their pony is confiscated for food by the local Committee of Public
Supply. They press on to Tillingham and the sea. There, they manage to
buy passage to
Continental Europe on a small
paddle steamer, part of a vast throng of shipping gathered off the Essex coast to evacuate refugees. The
torpedo ram HMS Thunder Child
destroys two attacking tripods before being destroyed by the Martians,
though this allows the evacuation fleet to escape, including the ship
carrying the Narrator's brother and his two travelling companions.
Shortly thereafter, all organised resistance has ceased, and the
Martians roam the shattered landscape unhindered.
The Earth under the Martians
At
the beginning of Book Two, the Narrator and the curate are plundering
houses in search of food. During this excursion, the men witness a
Martian handling-machine enter
Kew,
seizing any person it finds and tossing them into a "great metallic
carrier which projected behind him, much as a workman's basket hangs
over his shoulder", and the Narrator realises that the Martian invaders may have "a purpose other than destruction" for their victims. At a house in
Sheen, "a blinding glare of green light" and a loud concussion attend the arrival of the fifth Martian cylinder, and both men are trapped beneath the ruins for two weeks.
The Narrator's relations with the curate deteriorate over time,
and eventually he knocks him unconscious to silence his now loud
ranting; but the curate is overheard outside by a Martian, which
eventually removes his unconscious body with one of its handling machine
tentacles. The reader is then led to believe the Martians will perform a
fatal
transfusion
of the curate's blood to nourish themselves, as they have done with
other captured victims viewed by the Narrator through a small slot in
the house's ruins. The Narrator just barely escapes detection from the
returned foraging tentacle by hiding in the adjacent coal-cellar.
Eventually the Martians abandon the cylinder's crater, and the
Narrator emerges from the collapsed house where he had observed the
Martians up close during his ordeal; he then approaches
West London.
En route, he finds the Martian
red weed everywhere, a prickly vegetation spreading wherever there is abundant water. On
Putney Heath,
once again he encounters the artilleryman, who persuades him of a
grandiose plan to rebuild civilisation by living underground; but, after
a few hours, the Narrator perceives the laziness of his companion and
abandons him. Now in a deserted and silent London, slowly he begins to
go mad from his accumulated trauma, finally attempting to end it all by
openly approaching a stationary fighting-machine. To his surprise, he
discovers that all the Martians have been killed by an onslaught of
earthly
pathogens,
to which they had no immunity: "slain, after all man's devices had
failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon
this earth".
The Narrator continues on, finally suffering a brief but complete
nervous breakdown,
which affects him for days; he is nursed back to health by a kind
family. Eventually, he is able to return by train to Woking via a
patchwork of newly repaired tracks. At his home, he discovers that his
beloved wife has, somewhat miraculously, survived. In the last chapter,
the Narrator reflects on the significance of the Martian invasion and
the "abiding sense of doubt and insecurity" it has left in his mind.
Style
The War of the Worlds
presents itself as a factual account of the Martian invasion. The
Narrator is a middle-class writer of philosophical papers, somewhat
reminiscent of Doctor Kemp in
The Invisible Man,
with characteristics similar to author Wells at the time of writing.
The reader learns very little about the background of the Narrator or
indeed of anyone else in the novel; characterisation is unimportant. In
fact none of the principal characters are named, aside from the
astronomer Ogilvy.
Scientific setting
Wells trained as a science teacher during the latter half of the 1880s. One of his teachers was
Thomas Henry Huxley, famous as a major advocate of
Darwinism. He later taught science, and his first book was a biology textbook. He joined the scientific journal
Nature as a reviewer in 1894.
[12][13] Much of his work is notable for making contemporary ideas of science and technology easily understandable to readers.
The scientific fascinations of the novel are established in the
opening chapter where the Narrator views Mars through a telescope, and
Wells offers the image of the superior Martians having observed human
affairs, as though watching tiny organisms through a microscope.
Ironically it is microscopic Earth lifeforms that finally prove deadly
to the Martian invasion force. In 1894 a French astronomer observed a 'strange light' on Mars, and published his findings in the scientific journal Nature
on the second of August that year. Wells used this observation to open
the novel, imagining these lights to be the launching of the Martian
cylinders toward Earth.
American
astronomer Percival Lowell published the book
Mars in 1895 suggesting features of the planet's surface observed through telescopes might be
canals.
He speculated that these might be irrigation channels constructed by a
sentient life form to support existence on an arid, dying world, similar
to that which Wells suggests the Martians have left behind. The novel also presents ideas related to
Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, both in specific ideas discussed by the Narrator, and themes explored by the story.
Wells also wrote an essay titled 'Intelligence on Mars', published in 1896 in the
Saturday Review, which sets out many of the ideas for the Martians and their planet that are used almost unchanged in
The War of the Worlds.
In the essay he speculates about the nature of the Martian inhabitants
and how their evolutionary progress might compare to humans. He also
suggests that Mars, being an older world than the Earth, might have
become frozen and desolate, conditions that might encourage the Martians
to find another planet on which to settle.
Physical location
In 1895, Wells was an established writer and he married his second
wife, Catherine Robbins, moving with her to the town of Woking in
Surrey. There, he spent his mornings walking or cycling in the
surrounding countryside, and his afternoons writing. The original idea
for The War of the Worlds came from his brother during one of
these walks, pondering on what it might be like if alien beings were
suddenly to descend on the scene and start attacking its inhabitants.
Much of
The War of the Worlds takes place around
Woking and the surrounding area. The initial landing site of the Martian invasion force,
Horsell Common,
was an open area close to Wells's home. In the preface to the Atlantic
edition of the novel, he wrote of his pleasure in riding a bicycle
around the area, imagining the destruction of cottages and houses he saw
by the Martian heat-ray or their red weed.
While writing the novel, Wells enjoyed shocking his friends by
revealing details of the story, and how it was bringing total
destruction to parts of the
South London
landscape that were familiar to them. The characters of the
artilleryman, the curate, and the brother medical student were also
based on acquaintances in Woking and Surrey.
Wells wrote in a letter to Elizabeth Healey about his choice of
locations: "I'm doing the dearest little serial for Pearson's new
magazine, in which I completely wreck and sack Woking – killing my
neighbours in painful and eccentric ways – then proceed via Kingston and
Richmond to London, which I sack, selecting South Kensington for feats
of peculiar atrocity."
A 7-metre (23 feet) high sculpture of a tripod fighting machine, entitled The Martian,
based on descriptions in the novel stands in Crown Passage close to the
local railway station in Woking, designed and constructed by artist
Michael Condron.
Cultural setting
Wells'
depiction of suburban late Victorian culture in the novel was an
accurate representation of his own experiences at the time of writing. In the late 19th century, the
British Empire
was the predominant colonial and naval power on the globe, making its
domestic heart a poignant and terrifying starting point for an invasion
by Martians with their own imperialist agenda. He also drew upon a common fear which had emerged in the years approaching the turn of the century, known at the time as
fin de siècle or 'end of the age', which anticipated apocalypse at midnight on the last day of 1899.
Publication
In
the late 1890s it was common for novels, prior to full volume
publication, to be serialised in magazines or newspapers, with each part
of the serialisation ending upon a
cliffhanger to entice audiences to buy the next edition. This is a practice familiar from the first publication of
Charles Dickens' novels earlier in the nineteenth century.
The War of the Worlds was first published in serial form in
Pearson's Magazine in April – December 1897. Wells was paid £200 and Pearsons demanded to know the ending of the piece before committing to publish.
The complete volume was published by
William Heinemann in 1898 and has been in print ever since.
Two unauthorised serialisations of the novel were published in
the United States prior to the publication of the novel. The first was
published in the
New York Evening Journal between December 1897 and January 1898. The story was published as
Fighters from Mars or the War of the Worlds. It changed the location of the story to a New York setting. The second version changed the story to have the Martians landing in the area near and around
Boston, and was published by the
Boston Post in 1898, which Wells protested against. It was called
Fighters from Mars, or the War of the Worlds in and near Boston.
Both pirated versions of the story were followed by
Edison's Conquest of Mars by
Garrett P. Serviss. Even though these versions are deemed as unauthorised serialisations of the novel, it is possible that
H. G. Wells may have, without realising it, agreed to the serialisation in the
New York Evening Journal.
Reception
The War of the Worlds
was generally received very favourably by both readers and critics upon
its publication. There was, however, some criticism of the brutal
nature of the events in the narrative.
Relation to invasion literature
The Battle of Dorking front cover
Between 1871 and 1914 over 60 works of fiction for adult readers
describing invasions of Great Britain were published. The seminal work
was
The Battle of Dorking (1871) by
George Tomkyns Chesney,
an army officer. The book portrays a surprise German attack, with a
landing on the south coast of England, made possible by the distraction
of the
Royal Navy
in colonial patrols and the army in an Irish insurrection. The German
army makes short work of English militia and rapidly marches to London.
The story was published in
Blackwood's Magazine in May 1871 and was so popular that it was reprinted a month later as a pamphlet which sold 80,000 copies.
The appearance of this literature reflected the increasing
feeling of anxiety and insecurity as international tensions between
European Imperial powers escalated towards the outbreak of the
First World War.
Across the decades the nationality of the invaders tended to vary,
according to the most acutely perceived threat at the time. In the 1870s
the Germans were the most common invaders. Towards the end of the
nineteenth century, a period of strain on Anglo-French relations, and
the signing of a treaty between France and Russia, caused the French to
become the more common menace.
There are a number of plot similarities between Wells's book and
The Battle of Dorking.
In both books a ruthless enemy makes a devastating surprise attack,
with the British armed forces helpless to stop its relentless advance,
and both involve the destruction of the
Home Counties of southern England. However
The War of the Worlds transcends the typical fascination of
invasion literature
with European politics, the suitability of contemporary military
technology to deal with the armed forces of other nations, and
international disputes, with its introduction of an alien adversary.
Although much of invasion literature may have been less
sophisticated and visionary than Wells's novel, it was a useful,
familiar genre to support the publication success of the piece,
attracting readers used to such tales. It may also have proved an
important foundation for Wells's ideas as he had never seen or fought in
a war.
Scientific predictions and accuracy
Mars
Martian canals depicted by Percival Lowell.
The arid, lifeless surface of Mars as seen by the Viking Probe.
Many novels focusing on life on other planets written close to 1900 echo scientific ideas of the time, including
Pierre-Simon Laplace's
nebular hypothesis, Charles Darwin's theory of
natural selection, and
Gustav Kirchhoff's theory of
spectroscopy.
These scientific ideas combined to present the possibility that planets
are alike in composition and conditions for the development of species,
which would likely lead to the emergence of life at a suitable
geological age in a planet's development.
By the time Wells wrote
The War of the Worlds, there had been three centuries of observation of Mars through telescopes.
Galileo observed the planet's phases in 1610 and in 1666
Giovanni Cassini identified the polar ice caps. In 1878 Italian astronomer
Giovanni Schiaparelli observed geological features which he called
canali
(Italian for "channels"). This was mistranslated into English as
"canals" which, being artificial watercourses, fuelled the belief in
intelligent extraterrestrial life on the planet. This further influenced
American astronomer
Percival Lowell.
In 1895 Lowell published a book titled
Mars, which
speculated about an arid, dying landscape, whose inhabitants built
canals to bring water from the polar caps to irrigate the remaining
arable land. This formed the most advanced scientific ideas about the
conditions on the red planet available to Wells at the time
The War of the Worlds
was written, but the concept was later proved erroneous by more
accurate observation of the planet, and later landings by Russian and
American probes such as the two
Viking missions, that found a lifeless world too cold for water to exist in its liquid state.
Space travel
The Martians travel to the Earth in
cylinders, apparently fired from a huge
space gun on the surface of Mars. This was a common representation of space travel in the nineteenth century, and had also been used by
Jules Verne in
From the Earth to the Moon.
Modern scientific understanding renders this idea impractical, as it
would be difficult to control the trajectory of the gun precisely, and
the force of the explosion necessary to propel the cylinder from the
Martian surface to the
Earth would likely kill the occupants.
However, the 16-year-old Robert Goddard was inspired by the story and spent much of his life building
rockets. The research into rockets begun by Goddard eventually culminated in the
Apollo program's manned landing on the Moon, and the landing of robotic probes on Mars.
Total war
London during 'The Blitz' in World War II.
The Martian invasion's principal weapons are the Heat-Ray and the
poisonous Black Smoke. Their strategy includes the destruction of
infrastructure such as armament stores, railways, and telegraph lines;
it appears to be intended to cause maximum casualties, leaving humans
without any will to resist. These tactics became more common as the
twentieth century progressed, particularly during the 1930s with the
development of mobile weapons and technology capable of
surgical strikes on key military and civilian targets.
As noted by Howard Black: "In concrete details the Martian Fighting Machines as depicted by Wells have nothing in common with
tanks or
dive bombers, but the tactical and strategic use made of them is strikingly reminiscent of
Blitzkrieg
as it would be developed by the German armed forces four decades later.
The description of the Martians advancing inexorably, at lightning
speed, towards London; the British Army completely unable to put up an
effective resistance; the British government disintegrating and
evacuating the capital; the mass of terrified refugees clogging the
roads, all were to be precisely enacted in real life
at 1940 France."
Ironically this 1898 prediction came far closer to the actual land
fighting of World War II than Wells did much later, much closer to the
actual war, in the 1934
The Shape of Things to Come.
Weapons and armour
Wells's
description of chemical weapons – the Black Smoke used by the Martian
fighting machines to kill human beings in great numbers – became a
reality in
World War I. The comparison between
lasers
and the Heat-Ray was made as early as the later half of the 1950s when
lasers were still in development. Prototypes of mobile laser weapons
have been developed and are being researched and tested as a possible
future weapon in space.
Military theorists of the era, including those of the
Royal Navy prior to the First World War, had speculated about building a "fighting-machine" or a "land
dreadnought". Wells later further explored the ideas of an
armoured fighting vehicle in his short story "
The Land Ironclads".
There is a high level of science fiction abstraction in Wells's
description of Martian automotive technology; he stresses how Martian
machinery is devoid of wheels, using the "muscle-like" contractions of
metal discs along an axis to produce movement.
Electroactive polymers currently being developed for use in sensors and robotic actuators are a close match for Wells's description.
Interpretations
Wells's mentor, Darwinist advocate T. H. Huxley.
Natural selection
H. G. Wells was a student of
Thomas Henry Huxley, a proponent of the theory of natural selection.
In the novel, the conflict between mankind and the Martians is
portrayed as a survival of the fittest, with the Martians whose longer
period of successful evolution on the older Mars has led to them
developing a superior intelligence, able to create weapons far in
advance of humans on the younger planet Earth, who have not had the
opportunity to develop sufficient intelligence to construct similar
weapons.
Human evolution
The novel also suggests a potential future for human evolution and
perhaps a warning against overvaluing intelligence against more human
qualities. The Narrator describes the Martians as having evolved an
overdeveloped brain, which has left them with cumbersome bodies, with
increased intelligence, but a diminished ability to use their emotions,
something Wells attributes to bodily function.
The Narrator refers to an 1893 publication suggesting that the
evolution of the human brain might outstrip the development of the body,
and organs such as the stomach, nose, teeth, and hair would wither,
leaving humans as thinking machines, needing mechanical devices much
like the Tripod fighting machines, to be able to interact with their
environment. This publication is probably Wells's own "The Man of the
Year Million", first published in the
Pall Mall Gazette on 6 November 1893, which suggests similar ideas.
Colonialism and imperialism
Stamp showing the British Empire at the time of The War of the Worlds publication. Egypt was also under de facto British rule
At the time of the novel's publication the British Empire had
conquered and colonised dozens of territories in Africa, Australia,
North and South America, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and
the
Atlantic and
Pacific islands.
While Invasion Literature had provided an imaginative foundation
for the idea of the heart of the British Empire being conquered by
foreign forces, it was not until
The War of the Worlds that the reading public was presented with an adversary completely superior to themselves.
A significant motivating force behind the success of the British Empire
was its use of sophisticated technology; the Martians, also attempting
to establish an empire on Earth, have technology superior to their
British adversaries. In
The War of the Worlds, Wells depicted an imperial power as the victim of imperial aggression, and thus perhaps encouraging the reader to consider
imperialism itself.
Wells suggests this idea in the following passage:
And before we judge them [the
Martians] 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 own inferior races. The Tasmanians,
in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence
in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of
fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the
Martians warred in the same spirit?
— Chapter I, "The Eve of the War"
Social Darwinism
The novel also dramatizes the ideas of race presented in
Social Darwinism, in that the Martians exercise over humans their 'rights' as a superior race, more advanced in evolution.
Social Darwinism suggested that the success of these different
ethnic groups in world affairs, and social classes in a society, were
the result of evolutionary struggle in which the group or class more fit
to succeed did so; i.e., the ability of an ethnic group to dominate
other ethnic groups or the chance to succeed or rise to the top of
society was determined by genetic superiority. In more modern times it
is typically seen as dubious and unscientific for its apparent use of
Darwin's ideas to justify the position of the rich and powerful, or
dominant ethnic groups.
Wells himself matured in a society wherein the merit of an
individual was not considered as important as their social class of
origin. His father was a professional sportsman, which was seen as
inferior to 'gentle' status; whereas his mother had been a domestic
servant, and Wells himself was, prior to his writing career, apprenticed
to a draper. Trained as a scientist, he was able to relate his
experiences of struggle to Darwin's idea of a world of struggle; but
perceived science as a rational system, which extended beyond
traditional ideas of race, class and religious notions, and in fiction
challenged the use of science to explain political and social norms of
the day.
Religion and science
Good and evil appear relative in
The War of the Worlds,
and the defeat of the Martians has an entirely material cause: the
action of microscopic bacteria. An insane clergyman is important in the
novel, but his attempts to relate the invasion to
Armageddon seem examples of his mental derangement. His death, as a result of his
evangelical outbursts and ravings attracting the attention of the Martians, appears an indictment of his obsolete religious attitudes;
but the Narrator twice prays to God, and suggests that bacteria may
have been divinely allowed to exist on Earth for a reason such as this,
suggesting a more nuanced critique.
Influences
A Princess of Mars cover.
Mars and Martians
The novel originated several enduring Martian
tropes
in science fiction writing. These include Mars being an ancient world,
nearing the end of its life, being the home of a superior civilisation
capable of advanced feats of science and engineering, and also being a
source of invasion forces, keen to conquer the Earth. The first two
tropes were prominent in
Edgar Rice Burroughs "
Barsoom" series beginning with
A Princess of Mars in 1912.
Influential scientist
Freeman Dyson, a key figure in the search for extraterrestrial life, also acknowledges his debt to reading H. G. Wells's fictions as a child.
The publication and reception of The War of the Worlds also established the vernacular term of 'martian' as a description for something offworldly or unknown.
Aliens and alien invasion
Antecedents
Wells
is credited with establishing several extraterrestrial themes which
were later greatly expanded by science fiction writers in the 20th
century, including first contact and war between planets and their
differing species. There were, however, stories of aliens and alien
invasion prior to publication of The War of the Worlds.
In 1727
Jonathan Swift published
Gulliver's Travels.
The tale included a people who are obsessed with mathematics and more
advanced than Europeans scientifically. They populate a floating island
fortress called Laputa, 4½ miles in diameter, which uses its shadow to
prevent sun and rain from reaching earthly nations over which it
travels, ensuring they will pay tribute to the Laputians.
Voltaire's
Micromégas (1752) includes two beings from
Saturn
and Sirius who, though human in appearance, are of immense size and
visit the Earth out of curiosity. At first they think the planet is
uninhabited, due to the difference in scale between them and the peoples
of Earth. When they discover the haughty Earth-centric views of Earth
philosophers, they are greatly amused by how important Earth beings
think they are compared to greater beings in the universe such as
themselves.
In 1892 Robert Potter, an Australian clergyman, published The Germ Growers
in London. It describes a covert invasion by aliens who take on the
appearance of human beings and attempt to develop a virulent disease to
assist in their plans for global conquest. It was not widely read, and
consequently Wells's vastly more successful novel is generally credited
as the seminal alien invasion story.
The first science fiction to be set on Mars may be
Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record (1880) by
Percy Greg.
It was a long-winded book concerned with a civil war on Mars. Another
Mars novel, this time dealing with benevolent Martians coming to Earth
to give humankind the benefit of their advanced knowledge, was published
in 1897 by
Kurd Lasswitz –
Two Planets (
Auf Zwei Planeten).
It was not translated until 1971, and thus may not have influenced
Wells, although it did depict a Mars influenced by the ideas of Percival
Lowell.
Other examples are
Mr. Stranger's Sealed Packet (1889), which took place on Mars,
Gustavus W. Pope's
Journey to Mars (1894), and Ellsworth Douglas's
Pharaoh's Broker, in which the protagonist encounters an
Egyptian civilisation on Mars which, while parallel to that of the Earth, has evolved somehow independently.
Early examples of influence on science fiction
Wells had already proposed another outcome for the alien invasion story in
The War of the Worlds.
When the Narrator meets the artilleryman the second time, the
artilleryman imagines a future where humanity, hiding underground in
sewers and tunnels, conducts a
guerrilla war,
fighting against the Martians for generations to come, and eventually,
after learning how to duplicate Martian weapon technology, destroys the
invaders and takes back the Earth.
Six weeks after publication of the novel, the
Boston Post newspaper published another alien invasion story, an unauthorised sequel to
The War of the Worlds, which turned the tables on the invaders.
Edison's Conquest of Mars was written by
Garrett P. Serviss, a now little remembered writer, who described the famous inventor
Thomas Edison leading a
counterattack against the invaders on their home soil. Though this is actually a sequel to '
Fighters from Mars', a revised and unauthorised reprint of
The War of the Worlds, they both were first printed in the
Boston Post in 1898.
Lazar Lagin published
Major Well Andyou in USSR in 1962, an alternative view of events in
The War of the Worlds from the viewpoint of a traitor.
Later examples
The theme of
alien invasion
has remained popular to the present day and is frequently used in the
plots of all forms of popular entertainment including movies,
television, novels, comics and video games.
Tripods
The Tripods trilogy of books features a central theme of invasion by alien-controlled tripods.
Adaptations
The War of the Worlds has inspired seven films, as well as
various radio dramas, comic-book adaptations, video games, a number of
television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors.
The most famous, or infamous, adaptation is the
1938 radio broadcast that was narrated and directed by
Orson Welles.
The first two-thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a
news bulletin, often described as having led to outrage and panic by
listeners who believed the events described in the program to be real. In some versions of the story, up to a million people ran outside in terror.
However, later critics point out that the supposed panic was
exaggerated by newspapers of the time, seeking to discredit radio as a
source of information or exploit racial stereotypes.
According to research by A. Brad Schwartz, fewer than 50 Americans seem
to have fled outside in the wake of the broadcast and it is not clear
how many of them heard the broadcast directly.
In 1978, a best selling
musical album of the story was produced by
Jeff Wayne, with the voices of
Richard Burton and
David Essex.
Two later, somewhat different live concert musical versions based on
the original album have since been mounted by Wayne and toured
throughout the UK. Both versions of this stage production utilised
narration, lavish projected computer graphics, and a large Martian
fighting machine on stage.
In the 1980s, a joint American-Canadian venture produced the television series
War of the Worlds
that ran for two seasons and was a direct sequel to the 1953 feature
film. Its premise was that the Martians had not died off, but were
instead stored in suspension by the US government and that most people
had just forgotten the previous invasion; the accidental awakening of
the Martians results in another war.
A Halloween-based special episode of
Hey Arnold! was aired to parody
The War of the Worlds; the costumes that the main characters wore referenced a species from
Star Trek.
An animated series of
Justice League,
broadcast in 2001, begins with a three-part saga called "Secret
Origins" and features tripod machines invading and attacking the city.
Colin Morgan (
Merlin,
Humans) stars in
The Coming of the Martians,
a faithful audio dramatisation of Wells's classic 1897 story, adapted
by Nick Scovell, directed by Lisa Bowerman and produced in native 5.1
surround sound. It was released in July 2018 by Sherwood Sound Studios
in download format and as a 2-Disc CD, a Limited Edition DVD, and a
Collector's USB Edition.
There is also a novel adaptation, set in Victorian Britain of 1898 about HMS
Thunder Child, called
The Last Days of Thunder Child and written by C. A. Powell.
ISBN 978-1484088265
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