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War of the Worlds Review

my mind went wild when i read this masterpiece. my imagination went wild with visions that could never be showed on television. none of the movies could ever do right by the book. a great staple for all aspiring high school and college writers.

War of the Worlds Overview

Famous for the mistaken panic that ensued from Orson Welles’s 1938 radio dramatization, The War of the Worlds remains one of the most influential of all science fiction works. The night after a shooting star is seen streaking through the sky from Mars, a cylinder is discovered on Horsell Common in London. Naïve locals approach the cylinder armed just with a white flag—only to be quickly killed by an all-destroying heat ray, as terrifying tentacled invaders emerge. Soon the whole of human civilization is under threat as powerful Martians build gigantic killing machines, destroying all life in their path with black gas and burning ray. The forces of Earth, however, may prove harder to beat than they appear.

-Includes a newly established text, a full biographical essay on Wells, a list of further reading, and detailed notes
-Brian Aldiss’s introduction considers the novel’s view of religion and society

War of the Worlds Specifications

This is the granddaddy of all alien invasion stories, first published by H.G. Wells in 1898. The novel begins ominously, as the lone voice of a narrator tells readers that "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..."

Things then progress 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. Wells quickly moves the story from the countryside to the evacuation of London itself and the loss of all hope as England's military suffers defeat after defeat. With horror his narrator describes how the Martians suck the blood from living humans for sustenance, and how it's clear that man is not being conquered so much a corralled. --Craig E. Engler

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Customer Reviews

Shame on Penguin - Law Geek -
I hope they did not succeed in getting anyone to pay .00 for an electronic copy of a public domain work.

Steam driven extraterrestrials - Rune Rindel Hansen - Copenhagen, Denmark
It's amazing to read this book from 1898 because in many respects it has scenes which seems to be taken from the countless Mars attackers movies that was made by Hollywood in the last half of the 20.th century. One almost thinks that H. G. Wells was able to tap into the collective experiences of the American film makers more than 50 years after he had written his book. In this book the metropolis is not New York, but good old London, but when the Martians attack London we see the same traffic jammed roads, when people tries to excape the monsters. One thing which puzzled me a bit reading the book was that Wells always describes the workings of the Martians machines as exhausting steam and smoke. But then I thought about it, and it's obvious. Wells was living in an age where every mechanical action was steam driven so it was impossible for him to imagine mechanical action without steam and smoke.

Thank you - Nikki Alzamora - Baltimore MD
Thank you, My nephew loves his book.
It was fast shipping, and good price.

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Friday, August 27, 2010