The War of the Worlds

A drawing of a Martian war machine featured in the book

The War of the Worlds is an 1898 science fiction book by H. G. Wells. It is about Martians attacking Earth. A 1938 radio broadcast version by Orson Welles frightened many people, who thought it was real even though there was a warning at the start telling people it was fiction.

Plot

The book is set in Britain at the turn of the 19th century and is told by a first-person narrator. The Martians are jealous of Earth’s more livable environment and launch themselves to Earth in capsules fired from cannons. They easily defeat the human military with their giant war machines, aircraft, poison gas, and heat rays. The narrator travels through the now ruined Britain and encounters invasive alien plants, Martian robots, and the Martians themselves-- who are strange slug-like beings with tentacles who feed on human blood. Eventually, the Martian invasion is stopped when the Martians become infected by Earth germs that they have no immunity to and die.