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|
 1700 UKfirst edition | |
| Author | H. G. Wells |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Warwick Goble |
| Language | British language |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | William Heinemann (UK) Harper & Bros (US) |
Publication date | 1898[1] |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 666 |
| Text | The War of the Worlds atWikisource |
The War of the Worlds is ascience fiction novel by English authorH. G. Wells. It was written between 1895 and 1897,[2] and serialised inPearson's Magazine in the UK andCosmopolitan magazine in the US in 1897. The full novel was first published in hardcover in 1898 byWilliam Heinemann.The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between humankind and anextraterrestrial race.[3] The novel is thefirst-person narrative of an unnamedprotagonist inSurrey and his younger brother who escapes toTillingham in Essex asLondon andSouthern England are invaded byMartians. It is one of the most commented-on works in the science fictioncanon.[4]
The plot is similar to other works ofinvasion literature from the same period and has been variously interpreted as a commentary on thetheory of evolution,imperialism, andVictorian era fears, superstitions and prejudices. Wells later noted that inspiration for the plot was thecatastrophic effect of European colonisation on theAboriginal Tasmanians. Some historians have argued that Wells wrote the book to encourage his readership to question the morality ofimperialism.[5][6] At the time of publication, it was classified as ascientific romance, like Wells's earlier novel,The Time Machine.
The War of the Worlds has never been out of print: it spawned numerous feature films, radio dramas, a record album, comic book adaptations, television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. It was dramatised in a1938 radio programme, directed by and starringOrson Welles, that reportedly caused panic among listeners who did not know that the events were fictional.[7]
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 novel opens in the mid-1890s, with aliens onMars plotting aninvasion of Earth because their own world is becoming uninhabitable due to cooling and old age. The main narrative ("The Great Disillusionment") takes place in the early 20th century, in the summer, when an object thought to be ameteor lands onHorsell Common, near the narrator's home. It turns out to be an artificial cylinder that was launched towards Earth several months earlier as Earth and Mars approachedopposition. Several Martians emerge and appear to struggle with Earth's gravity and unfamiliar atmosphere. When a human delegation approaches the cylinder waving awhite flag, the Martians incinerate them using a heat ray. The crowd flees, and that evening a large military force surrounds the cylinder.
The next day, the narrator takes his wife to safety inLeatherhead by means of adog-cart rented from the local pub landlord but then turns back so that he can return it. That night, he sees a three-legged Martian"fighting-machine" (tripod), armed with a heat-ray and achemical weapon: the poisonous "black smoke". Tripods have wiped out the human soldiers around the cylinder and destroyed most ofWoking. The narrator approaches his own house and finds the landlord dead in the front garden from inhaling the black smoke. While keeping watch from an upper floor window, he offers shelter to anartilleryman who has fled after his company was wiped out attacking the cylinder. The narrator and the artilleryman try to escape back towards Leatherhead but are separated during a Martian attack betweenShepperton andWeybridge. As refugees try to cross theRiver Wey, the army is able to destroy a tripod with concentrated artillery fire, and the Martians retreat. The narrator travels toWalton, where he meets an unnamedcurate.
The Martians attack again, and people begin to flee London, including the narrator's brother, who travels with his neighbor, Mrs. Elphinstone, and her sister-in-law to keep them safe. They reach the coast and buy passage toContinental Europe on a makeshift fleet of refugee ships. Tripods attack, but atorpedo ram,HMSThunder Child, destroys two of them before being destroyed itself (a third is either destroyed in the detonation of the ship's ammunition stores, or flees unseen in the resultant smoke), and the evacuation fleet escapes. Soon, all organised resistance collapses, and Martians roam the shattered landscape unhindered.
At the beginning of Book Two, the narrator and the curate witness a Martian machine seizing people and tossing them into a metal carrier. The narrator realises that the Martian invaders may have plans for their victims. When a fifth Martian cylinder lands, both men are trapped beneath the ruins of a manor house. The narrator learns from his observations how Martian anatomy works and how they use living creatures' blood to nourish themselves. The two men's relationship deteriorates as the curate slowly falls into despair, and when he tries to eat their remaining food supplies, the narrator knocks him unconscious. A passing Martian removes the curate's body, but the narrator escapes detection.
The Martians abandon the cylinder's crater, and the narrator emerges from the collapsed house and heads for West London. En route, he finds Martianred weed everywhere, prickly vegetation spreading wherever there is abundant water, but notices that it is slowly dying. OnPutney Heath, he encounters the artilleryman again, but soon abandons him when the man tries to convince him that they should keep on fighting the Martians. Driven mad by his trauma, he finally attempts suicide by approaching a stationary fighting machine onPrimrose Hill. To his surprise, he discovers that all the Martians have been killed by an onslaught of earthlypathogens, to which they had no immunity.
The narrator suffers anervous breakdown and is nursed back to health by a kind family. Eventually, he returns to Woking, and discovers that his wife has survived. In the last chapter, he reflects on the Martian invasion, its impact on humanity's view of itself and the future, and the effect that it has had on his mind.
The War of the Worlds presents itself as a factual account of the Martian invasion. It is one of the first works to theorise the existence of a race intelligent enough to invade Earth. The narrator is a middle-class writer of philosophical papers, reminiscent of Doctor Kemp inThe Invisible Man, with characteristics similar to author Wells at the time of writing.[citation needed] The reader learns little about the background of the narrator or indeed of anyone else in the novel. In fact, few of the principal characters are named, aside from the astronomer Ogilvy and Mrs. and Miss Elphinstone.[8]
Wells explained that he was exposed to the scenario of an empty and depopulated London almost simultaneously by a friend during a conversation and through the novelA Sensational Trance, by Forbes Dawson. Being attracted to the idea about writing a similar story himself, he tried to come up with a reason for why London was empty, and concluded the one that made the most sense was a mass exodus. When thinking about what could have caused the flight, he suddenly remembered his brother's idea about superior beings from another planet suddenly dropping from the sky. Wells' sonAnthony West claimed another seed for the novel can be found inThe Time Machine, where the narrator speculates about the possible future evolution of humanity, thinking it might could have "developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful". Next, the picture came to him that the aliens would arrive in interplanetary cylinders, an idea he borrowed from Jules Verne's stories about spaceflight. When deciding from what planet, he picked Mars, both because it was the one most similar to Earth, and because scientists back then wrongly assumed Mars was older than Earth, and therefore the Martians would have a longer evolutionary history than humans, having evolved into much more advanced creatures.[9]
Wells was trained as a science teacher during the latter half of the 1880s. One of his teachers wasThomas Henry Huxley, a major advocate ofDarwinism. Wells later taught science, and his first book was a biology textbook.[10][11] Much of his work makes contemporary ideas of science and technology easily understandable.[12]
The scientific fascinations of the novel are established in the opening chapter. 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. In August 1894, a French astronomer reported sightings of a "strange light" on Mars.[13] Wells used this observation to open the novel, imagining these lights to be the launching of the Martian cylinders toward Earth.[8]
Italian astronomerGiovanni Schiaparelli observed features on Mars in 1878, which he calledcanali (Italian for "channels"). In 1895, American astronomerPercival Lowell speculated in his bookMars that these might be irrigation channels, constructed by a sentient life form to support existence on an arid, dying world.[8][14] The novel also explores ideas related toCharles Darwin's theory ofnatural selection.[15]
In 1896, Wells published an essay on 'Intelligence on Mars' in theSaturday Review, setting out ideas about life on Mars. Wells speculates on the nature of Martian inhabitants and how their evolutionary progress might compare to humans.[16][17] These ideas are used almost unchanged inThe War of the Worlds.[8][16]
In 1895, Wells married Catherine Robbins, and moved with her toWoking in Surrey. There, he spent his mornings walking or cycling in the countryside, and his afternoons writing. He used these bicycle tours to find places he would refer to in his novel. He wrote in his autobiography that he “wheeled about the district marking down suitable places and people for destruction by my Martians”.[18][19] A 23 feet (7.0 m) high sculpture of a tripod fighting machine, entitledThe Woking Martian, based on descriptions in the novel stands in Crown Passage close to the local railway station in Woking, designed and constructed in 1998 by artist Michael Condron. Fifty meters further up thepedestrianised street is a concrete and brick representation of a Martian cylinder.[20]
Wells's depiction of late Victorian suburban culture in the novel was an accurate representation of his own experiences at the time.[21] In the late 19th century, theBritish Empire was the predominant colonial power on the globe, making its domestic heart a poignant and terrifying starting point for an invasion by Martians with their own imperialist agenda.[22] Wells also drew on a common fear that emerged in the years approaching the turn of the century, known as thefin de siècle or 'end of the age', which anticipated an apocalypse occurring at midnight on the last day of 1899.[3]
In the late 1890s it was common for novels to be serialised in magazines or newspapers before publication in full, with each part of the serialisation ending on acliffhanger to entice audiences to buy the next issue. This practice was familiar fromCharles Dickens' novels earlier in the 19th century.The War of the Worlds was first serialised in the United Kingdom inPearson's Magazine from April to December 1897.[23] Wells was paid £200 and Pearsons demanded to know the ending of the piece before committing to publish it.[24] The complete volume was first published byHeinemann in 1898 and has been in print ever since,[25] although several editions exist. The 1924 Atlantic edition is considered the definitive text used for reprints. In addition, a revised version for schools was first published by Heinemann in 1951.[26]
Two unauthorised serialisations of the novel were published in the United States prior to publication of the novel. The first was in theNew York Evening Journal where the story was published asFighters from Mars or the War of the Worlds, located in a New York setting, between December 1897 and January 1898.[27] The second version had the Martians landing near and aroundBoston, and was published byThe Boston Post asFighters from Mars, or the War of the Worlds in and near Boston in 1898.[10] Even though these versions are considered unauthorised, Hughes and Geduld speculate that Wells may inadvertently have agreed to the serialisation in theNew York Evening Journal.[2] These two versions of the story were followed byEdison's Conquest of Mars byGarrett P. Serviss.
Holt, Rinehart & Winston reprinted the book in 2000, paired withThe Time Machine, and commissioned Michael Koelsch to illustrate a new cover.[28]
The War of the Worlds was received favourably by both readers and critics.The Illustrated London News wrote that the serialisation inPearson’s magazine had "a very distinct success".[29] The story did even better as a book, and reviewers rated it as "the very best work he has yet produced",[29] and highlighting the story's originality in showing Mars in a new light through the concept of an alien invasion of Earth.[29] Writing forHarper's Weekly, Sidney Brooks admired Wells's writing style: "he has complete check over his imagination, and makes it effective by turning his most horrible of fancies into the language of the simplest, least startling denomination".[29] Praising Wells's "power of vivid realization",The Daily News reviewer wrote, "the imagination, the extraordinary power of presentation, the moral significance of the book cannot be contested".[29] There was, however, some criticism of the brutal nature of the events in the narrative.[30]
Between 1871 and 1914 more than 60 works of fiction for adult readers describing invasions of Great Britain were published. The original work wasThe Battle of Dorking (1871) byGeorge Tomkyns Chesney, which portrays a surprise German attack and landing on the south coast of England, made possible by the distraction of theRoyal 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. This story was published inBlackwood's Magazine in May 1871 and was so popular that it was reprinted a month later as a pamphlet which sold 80,000 copies.[31][32]
There are clear plot similarities between Wells's book andThe Battle of Dorking. In both, 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 theHome Counties of Southern England.[32] However,The War of the Worlds transcends the typical fascination ofinvasion literature with European politics and international disputes, with its introduction of an alien adversary.[33]
The invasion literature genre provided a familiar base from which to support the success ofThe War of the Worlds. It may also have proved an important foundation for Wells's ideas, as he had never seen or fought in a war.[34]
Many novels focusing on life on other planets written close to 1900 echoscientific ideas of the time, includingPierre-Simon Laplace'snebular hypothesis,Charles Darwin'sscientific theory ofnatural selection, andGustav Kirchhoff's theory ofspectroscopy. These 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.[35]
By the time Wells wroteThe 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 1666Giovanni Cassini identified the polar ice caps.[14] In 1878 Italian astronomerGiovanni Schiaparelli observed geological features which he calledcanali (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 influenced American astronomerPercival Lowell.[36] In 1895 Lowell's bookMars speculated about an arid, dying landscape, whose inhabitants built canals to bring water from the polar caps to irrigate the remaining arable land. This encapsulated contemporary scientific ideas about conditions on the Red Planet at the timeThe War of the Worlds was written; ideas which persisted until they were tested by space missions, starting with theViking program, that found a lifeless world that was too cold for liquid water to exist.[14]
The Martians travel to the Earth incylinders, apparently fired from a hugespace gun on the surface of Mars. This was a common representation of space travel in the 19th century, and had also been used byJules Verne inFrom 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.[37]
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 20th century progressed, particularly during the 1930s with the development of mobile weapons and technology capable ofsurgical strikes on key military and civilian targets.[38]
Wells's vision of a war bringing total destruction without moral limitations inThe War of the Worlds was not taken seriously by readers at the time of publication. He later expanded these ideas in the novelsWhen the Sleeper Wakes (1899),The War in the Air (1908), andThe World Set Free (1914). This kind oftotal war did not become fully realised until theSecond World War.[39]
Critic Howard Black wrote that "In concrete details the Martian Fighting Machines as depicted by Wells have nothing in common withtanks ordive bombers, but the tactical and strategic use made of them is strikingly reminiscent ofBlitzkrieg 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 lifeat 1940 France." Black regarded this 1898 depiction as far closer to the actual land fighting of World War II than Wells's much later workThe Shape of Things to Come (1933).[40]
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 inWorld War I.[23] The comparison betweenlasers 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.[38]
Military theorists of the era, including those of theRoyal Navy prior to theFirst World War, had speculated about building a "fighting-machine" or a "landdreadnought". Wells later further explored the ideas of anarmoured fighting vehicle in his short story "The Land Ironclads".[41] 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. They use "a complicated system of sliding parts" to produce movement, possess multiple whip-like tentacles for grasping, and paralleling animal motion, "quasi-muscles abounded in the crablike handling machine".[42]
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H. G. Wells was a student ofThomas Henry Huxley, a proponent of the theory ofnatural selection.[43] In the novel, the conflict between humankind and the Martians is portrayed as asurvival 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.[43]
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.[citation needed]
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 inThe Pall Mall Gazette on 6 November 1893, which suggests similar ideas.[44][45] In his vision for the future of humanity, Wells imagined them as having huge hands and large heads with soulful eyes. The rest of the body had shriveled into nothing. Instead of a digestive system, they absorb liquid nutrients from a pool through the surface of their body, while machinery does all the work their muscles can no longer accomplish, and their emotions have been replaced by an intellect that have turned society into a "paragon of order and calm" through co-operation.[46]
At the time of the novel's publication, theBritish Empire consisted of roughly a quarter of the world's territories, and arelative period of peace known as thePax Britannica existed between thegreat powers of theWestern world. Between 1815 and 1914, around 26,000,000 square kilometres (10,000,000 sq mi) of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire.
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 untilThe War of the Worlds that the British public was presented with an adversary that was completely superior to themselves.[47] 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.[48] InThe War of the Worlds, Wells depicted an imperial power as the victim of imperial aggression, and thus perhaps encouraging the reader to consider the morality ofimperialism itself.[47]
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 vanishedBison and theDodo, but upon its own inferior races. TheTasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in awar 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"
The novel dramatises the ideas of race presented insocial Darwinism, in that the more advanced Martians exercise their "rights" as a superior race over humans.[49] Social Darwinism implied that the success of 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. In more recent times, the use to such arguments to justify the position of the rich and powerful, or dominant groups is regarded as dubious at best.[50]
Wells grew up in a society where the merit of an individual was not considered as important as their social class. His father was a professional sportsman, and seen as inferior to "gentle" status. His mother was a domestic servant, and Wells himself was initially apprenticed to a draper. As a scientist, he was able to relate his experiences of struggle to Darwin's idea of a world of struggle; but saw science as a rational system, which extended beyond traditional ideas of race, class and religious notions, and in his fiction challenged the use of science to explain political and social norms of the day.[51]
Good and evil appear relative[according to whom?] inThe 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 toArmageddon are, to Michael Draper, examples of his mental derangement.[45] His death, as a result of hisevangelical outbursts and ravings attracting the attention of the Martians, appears an indictment[according to whom?] of his obsolete religious attitudes;[52] 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.[citation needed]
The novel initiated several enduring Martiantropes 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 inEdgar Rice Burroughs' "Barsoom" series beginning withA Princess of Mars in 1912.[14]
PhysicistFreeman Dyson, a key figure in the search for extraterrestrial life, acknowledged his debt to reading H. G. Wells's fictions as a child.[53]
The publication and reception ofThe War of the Worlds established the vernacular term of "Martian" as a description for something offworldly or unknown.[54]
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 the publication ofThe War of the Worlds.[3]
In 1727Jonathan Swift publishedGulliver's Travels. The tale included a people who are obsessed with mathematics and more advanced than Europeans scientifically. They populate a floating island fortress calledLaputa, 4½ miles in diameter, which uses its shadow to prevent the Sun and rain from reaching Earthly nations over which it travels, ensuring that they will pay tribute to the Laputians.[55]
Voltaire'sMicromégas (1752) includes two beings fromSaturn and Sirius who, though human in appearance, are of immense size and visit the Earth out of curiosity. At first the difference in scale between them and the peoples of Earth makes them think that the planet is uninhabited. 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.[56]
In 1892 Robert Potter, an Australian clergyman, publishedThe 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' vastly more successful novel is generally credited as the seminal alien invasion story.[3]
The first science fiction to be set on Mars may beAcross the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record (1880) byPercy 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 byKurd 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.[57]
Other examples areHugh MacColl'sMr. Stranger's Sealed Packet (1889), which took place on Mars, Gustavus W. Pope'sJourney to Mars (1894), andPharaoh's Broker by Elmer Dwiggins, writing under the name ofEllsworth Douglass, in which the protagonist encounters anEgyptian civilisation on Mars which, while parallel to that of Earth, has evolved somehow independently.[58]
Wells had already proposed another outcome for the alien invasion story inThe 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 aguerrilla 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 Earth.[52]
Six weeks after the publication of the novel,The Boston Post newspaper published another alien invasion story, an unauthorised sequel toThe War of the Worlds, which turned the tables on the invaders.Edison's Conquest of Mars was written byGarrett P. Serviss, a now little-remembered writer, who described the inventorThomas Edison leading acounterattack against the invaders on their home soil.[23] Though this is actually a sequel toFighters from Mars, a revised and unauthorised reprint ofThe War of the Worlds, they both were first printed in theBoston Post in 1898.[59]Lazar Lagin publishedMajor Well Andyou in the U.S.S.R. in 1962, an alternative view of events inThe War of the Worlds from the viewpoint of a traitor.[60]
The War of the Worlds was reprinted in the United States in 1927, before theGolden Age of science fiction, byHugo Gernsback inAmazing Stories.John W. Campbell, another key science fiction editor of the era, and periodic short story writer, published several alien invasion stories in the 1930s. Many well-known science fiction writers were to follow, includingIsaac Asimov,Arthur C. Clarke,Clifford D. Simak andRobert A. Heinlein withThe Puppet Masters andJohn Wyndham withThe Kraken Wakes.[27] Wyndham, without mentioning Wells' book by name, mentions in the opening chapter of his notes that an invasion of Earth by extraterrestrials might turn out to be "very different from how it was depicted in fiction".
The theme ofalien invasion has remained popular to the present day and is frequently used in the plots of films, television, novels, comics and video games.Alan Moore'sgraphic novelThe League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II retells the events inThe War of the Worlds.
As of 2024,The War of the Worlds has inspired seven films, as well as various radio dramas, comics, video games, television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. Most are set in different locations or eras to the original novel. Among the adaptations is the1938 radio broadcast narrated and directed byOrson Welles. The first two-thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of news bulletins, often described as having led to outrage and panic by listeners who believed the events described in the program to be real.[62] However, later critics pointed out that the supposed panic was exaggerated by newspapers of the time, seeking to discredit radio as a source of news and information[63] or exploit racial stereotypes.[64]
The first film adaptation wasThe War of the Worlds, produced in 1953 byGeorge Pal, directed byByron Haskin, and starringGene Barry.[65] In 2005,Steven Spielberg directedanother film version starringTom Cruise.[66][67]
In 1978,Jeff Wayne produced amusical album of the story, with the voices ofRichard Burton andDavid Essex. Wayne has also toured two live concert musical versions.[68][69]
An immersive experience ofThe War of the Worlds set to Jeff Wayne's score opened in London in 2019. The show uses a blend of virtual reality, volumetricholograms and live theatre.[70]
The War of the Worlds public domain audiobook atLibriVox| International | |
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