The War of the Worlds

by H. G. Wells

Unabridged read by Christopher Hurt

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The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells - AudioBook CD

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The War of the Worlds (1898), by H. G. Wells, is an early science fiction novel, describing an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using Tripod fighting machines, equipped with advanced weaponry. It is considered one of the most important foundation works of Science Fiction, and the seminal depiction of an alien invasion of Earth. The novel is narrated by an anonymous journalist, living in the area where the invaders first land. Throughout the narrative he struggles to reunite with his wife and brother, while witnessing the Martians spreading destruction across the Southern English counties and London itself, destroying all human resistance. Finding London an abandoned ruin, and seeing little hope for humankind, he decides to sacrifice himself to the invaders, only to discover that they have succumbed to the effects of Earth bacteria, to which they have no immunity.

It has been related to Invasion Literature at the time of publication. It has been interpreted as a commentary on evolutionary theory, Colonialism, Imperialism and The British Empire, and the fears and prejudices of late Victorian culture. It has influenced many works of literature, film and other media, as well as spawning several films, radio dramas, comic book adaptations, a television series, and a number of sequels or parallel stories written by other authors.

The story is set in England around the turn of the twentieth century and is narrated by an anonymous journalist, who is present at an observatory in Ottershaw when a series of explosions are witnessed on the surface of the planet Mars, causing much interest among the scientific community. Some time later a "meteor" lands on Horsell Common, to the south of London, close to the Narrator's home. He is among the first to discover that the object is a space-going artificial cylinder. When the cylinder opens, the Martians—bulky, octopus-like creatures the size of a bear— briefly emerge, show difficulty in coping the Earth's atmosphere, and rapidly retreat into the cylinder. A human deputation moves towards the cylinder, but the Martian incinerate them with a Heat-Ray weapon, before begining the construction of alien war machinery. After the attack, the narrator takes his wife to Leatherhead to stay with relatives until the threat is eliminated. Upon returning home, he discovers the Martians have assembled towering three-legged "fighting-machines" armed with a heat-ray and a chemical weapon: "the black smoke". These Tripods easily defeat army units positioned around the crater and proceed to attack surrounding communities. Fleeing the scene, the Narrator meets a retreating artilleryman, who tells him that another cylinder has landed between Woking and Leatherhead, cutting the narrator off from his wife. The two men try to escape together, but are separated at the Shepperton to Weybridge Ferry during a Martian attack on Shepperton. More cylinders land across the United Kingdom, and a panicked flight out of London begins, including the Narrator's brother and wife. The torpedo ram HMS Thunder Child destroys two tripods before being destroyed by the Martians, though this allows the ship carrying the Narrator's brother, and his two female companions to escape. Shortly after, all organized resistance has ceased, and the Tripods roam the shattered landscape unhindered, killing humans with their Black Smoke. Red weed, a fast growing Martian form of vegetation spreads over the landscape, aggressively overcoming the Earth's ecology, in much the same way the Martians have overcome human civilization.

The Narrator takes refuge in a ruined building shortly before a Martian cylinder lands nearby, trapping him with an insane curate, who has been traumatized by the invasion and believes the Martians to be satanic creatures heralding the advent of Armageddon. For several days, the narrator desperately tries to calm the clergyman, and avoid attracting attention, while witnessing the Martians feeding on humans by direct blood transfusion. Eventually the curate's evangelical outbursts lead the Martians to their hiding place, and while the Narrator escapes detection, the clergyman is dragged away. Once the Martians have departed, the Narrator heads towards Central London, and once again encounters the artilleryman, who has plans to rebuild civilization underground, their quixotic nature shown by the slow progress of an unimpressive trench the artilleryman has taken several days to complete. The Narrator then heads into a deserted London, finally decides to give up his life by rushing towards the martians, but then discovers they have succumbed to terrestrial pathogenic bacteria, to which they have no immunity. At the conclusion, the Narrator is unexpectedly reunited with his wife, and they, along with the rest of humanity, are faced with a new and expanded universe as a result of the invasion.

About the Author H.G. Wells

H.G Wells's first non-fiction bestseller was Anticipations (1901). When originally serialised in a magazine it was subtitled, "An Experiment in Prophecy", and is considered his most explicitly futuristic work. Anticipating what the world would be like in the year 2000, the book is interesting both for its hits (trains and cars resulting in the dispersion of population from cities to suburbs; moral restrictions declining as men and women seek greater sexual freedom; the defeat of German militarism, and the existence of a European Union) and its misses (he did not expect successful aircraft before 1950, and averred that "my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea"). His early novels, called "scientific romances", invented a number of themes now classic in science fiction in such works as The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, When the Sleeper Wakes, and The First Men in the Moon (all except When the Sleeper Wakes have been made into films). He also wrote other, non-fantastic novels which have received critical acclaim, including Kipps and the satire on Edwardian advertising, Tono-Bungay. H. G. Wells wrote several dozen short stories and novellas, the best known of which is "The Country of the Blind" (1904).

Though Tono-Bungay was not a science-fiction novel, radioactive decay plays a small but consequential role in it. Radioactive decay plays a much larger role in The World Set Free (1914). This book contains what is surely his biggest prophetic "hit." Scientists of the day were well aware that the natural decay of radium releases energy at a slow rate over thousands of years. The rate of release is too slow to have practical utility, but the total amount released is huge. H. G. Wells' novel revolves around an (unspecified) invention that accelerates the process of radioactive decay, producing bombs that explode with no more than the force of ordinary high explosive— but which "continue to explode" for days on end. "Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century," he wrote, "than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible... [but] they did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands." Leó Szilárd acknowledged that the book inspired him to theorise the nuclear chain reaction.

H. G. Wells also wrote nonfiction. His bestselling two-volume work, The Outline of History (1920), began a new era of popularised world history. It received a mixed critical response from professional historians.[16] Many other authors followed with 'Outlines' of their own in other subjects. H. G. Wells reprised his Outline in 1922 with a much shorter popular work, A Short History of the World,[17] and two long efforts, The Science of Life (1930) and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1931). The 'Outlines' became sufficiently common for James Thurber to parody the trend in his humorous essay, "An Outline of Scientists" — indeed, H. G. Wells's Outline of History remains in print with a new 2005 edition, while A Short History of the World has been recently reedited (2006).

From quite early in his career, he sought a better way to organise society, and wrote a number of Utopian novels. Usually starting with the world rushing to catastrophe, until people realise a better way of living: whether by mysterious gases from a comet causing people to behave rationally (In the Days of the Comet (1906)), or a world council of scientists taking over, as in The Shape of Things to Come (1933, which he later adapted for the 1936 Alexander Korda film, Things to Come). This depicted, all too accurately, the impending World War, with cities being destroyed by aerial bombs. He also portrayed the rise of fascist dictators in The Autocracy of Mr Parham (1930) and The Holy Terror (1939), though in the former novel, the tale is revealed at the last to have been Mr Parham's dream vision.
H. G. Wells in 1943

H. G. Wells contemplates the ideas of nature versus nurture and questions humanity in books such as The Island of Doctor Moreau. Not all his scientific romances ended in a happy Utopia, and in fact, H. G. Wells also wrote the first dystopia novel, When the Sleeper Wakes (1899, rewritten as The Sleeper Awakes, 1910), which pictures a future society where the classes have become more and more separated, leading to a revolt of the masses against the rulers. The Island of Doctor Moreau is even darker. The narrator, having been trapped on an island of animals vivisected (unsuccessfully) into human beings, eventually returns to England; like Gulliver on his return from the Houyhnhnms, he finds himself unable to shake off the perceptions of his fellow humans as barely civilised beasts, slowly reverting back to their animal natures.

H. G. Wells also wrote the preface for the first edition of W. N. P. Barbellion's diaries, The Journal of a Disappointed Man, published in 1919. Since "Barbellion" was the real author's pen name, many reviewers believed H. G. Wells to have been the true author of the Journal; H. G. Wells always denied this, despite being full of praise for the diaries, but the rumours persisted until Barbellion's death later that year.

In 1927, Florence Deeks sued H. G. Wells for plagiarism, claiming that he had stolen much of the content of The Outline of History from a work, The Web, she had submitted to the Canadian Macmillan Company, but who held onto the manuscript for eight months before rejecting it. Despite numerous similarities in phrasing and factual errors, the court found H. G. Wells not guilty. In 1934 H. G. Wells predicted that another world war would begin in 1940, a prediction which ultimately came true. In 1936, before the Royal Institution, H. G. Wells called for the compilation of a constantly growing and changing World Encyclopedia, to be reviewed by outstanding authorities and made accessible to every human being. In 1938, he published a collection of essays on the future organisation of knowledge and education, World Brain, including the essay, "The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopaedia."

Near the end of the second World War, Allied forces discovered that the SS had compiled lists of intellectuals and politicians slated for immediate execution upon the invasion of England in the abandoned Operation Sea Lion. The name "H. G. Wells" appeared high on the list for the "crime" of being a socialist. H. G. Wells, as president of the International PEN (Poets, Essayists, Novelists), had already angered the Nazis by overseeing the expulsion of the German PEN club from the international body in 1934 following the German PEN's refusal to admit non-Aryan writers to its membership.

The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells - AudioBook CD