The War of the WorldsPlain Label Books, 1898 The War of the Worlds is a novel written by H. G. Wells in 1898, depicting an alien invasion of the earth, and is often regarded as being the first to depict such a disaster. The book tells the story of a Martian invasion of Earth. The Martians, fleeing their own planet because its resources are depleted, invade Earth, landing in England, sweeping through the countryside, destroying or capturing everything in their path. Any effort by the humans to thwart the Martian advance is crushed; the alien invaders seem unstoppable. Since its publication, The War of the Worlds has entered pop. |
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Addlestone artilleryman began black powder Black Smoke blackened body bridge brother Byfleet Chertsey Chobham common crawled creatures crowd curate cylinder darkness dead death door drove earth Edgware escape eyes face faint fear feet fighting-machine fire flame flash George's Hill going green grew grey guns hand handling-machine heap heard Heat-Ray heliograph Hill horse Horsell Horsell Common houses huge human hurried kitchen lane Leatherhead light London Londonward looked machine Mars Martians Maybury Maybury Hill metallic mind morning nearer night northward Ogilvy Ottershaw pine woods planet Primrose Hill Pyrford railway realised red weed river road rose round ruins running rushed sand pits scarcely scullery seemed seen Shepperton shouted side silent slowly smashed sound staring steam stood stopped strange streets struggle suddenly tentacles Thames things thought tumult turned ulla vapour watching Weybridge wife Wimbledon window Woking station yards
Popular passages
Page 219 - And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!
Page 286 - It may be that in the larger design of the universe this invasion from Mars is not without its ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us of that serene confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of decadence, the gifts to human science it has brought are enormous, and it has done much to promote the conception of the commonweal of mankind.
Page 43 - At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all. This feeling was very strong upon me that night. Here was another side to my dream. But the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and the swift death flying yonder, not two miles away. There was a noise of business from the gasworks, and the electric-lamps...
Page 69 - Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere insensate machine driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which gripped a young pine-tree) swinging and rattling about its strange body. It picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a head looking about.
Page 202 - Martians we have beyond dispute the actual accomplishment of such a suppression of the animal side of the organism by the intelligence. To me it is quite credible that the Martians may be descended from beings not unlike ourselves, by a gradual development of brain and hands (the latter giving rise to the two bunches of delicate tentacles at last) at the expense of the rest of the body. Without the body the brain would, of course, become a mere selfish intelligence, without any of the emotional substratum...
Page 6 - And before we judge of them 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?
Page 249 - Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them; train them to do tricks — who knows? — get sentimental over the pet boy who grew up and had to be killed. And some, maybe, they will train to hunt us.
Page 143 - By ten o'clock the police organisation, and by mid-day even the railway organisations, were losing coherency, losing shape and efficiency, guttering, softening, running at last in that swift liquefaction of the social body. All the railway lines north of the Thames and the South-Eastern people at Cannon Street had been warned by midnight on Sunday, and trains were being filled. People were fighting savagely for standing-room in the carriages even at two o'clock. By three...
Page 251 - Those who stop obey orders. Able-bodied, clean-minded women we want also — mothers and teachers. No lackadaisical ladies — no blasted rolling eyes. We can't have any weak or silly. Life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die.
Page 197 - Martians do not seem to have had any sense of smell, but it had a pair of very large dark-coloured eyes, and just beneath this a kind of fleshy beak. In the back of this head or body— I scarcely know how to speak of it— was the single tight tympanic surface, since known to be anatomically an ear, though it must have been almost useless in our dense air. In a group round the mouth were sixteen slender, almost whiplike tentacles, arranged in two bunches of eight each.