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War Of The Worlds
By HG Wells

Thanks to Jonathan Smith
for use of the book cover images

Read the War Of The Worlds book online at Bartleby

HOW THE BOOK STARTS

"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 and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same..."

WAR OF THE WORLDS - BOOK CHAPTERS

Book One: The Coming Of The Martians

1. The Eve Of The War
2. The Falling Star
3. On Horsell Common
4. The Cylinder Opens
5. The Heat-Ray
6. The Heat-Ray In The Chobham Road
7. How I Reached Home
8. Friday Night
9. The Fighting Begins
10. In The Storm
11. At The Window
12. What I Saw Of The Destruction Of Weybridge And Shepperton
13. How I Fell In With The Curate
14. In London
15. What Had Happened In Surrey
16. The Exodus From London
17. The “Thunder Child”

Book Two: The Earth Under The Martians

1. Under Foot
2. What We Saw From The Ruined House
3. The Days Of Imprisonment
4. The Death Of The Curate
5. The Stillness
6. The Work Of Fifteen Days
7. The Man On Putney Hill
8. Dead London
9. Wreckage
10. The Epilogue

STUDY GUIDE

Click here for a study guide on H.G. Wells WOTW

HG WELLS LINKS

HG Wells Society - Click here
HG Wells biography - Click here or here
HG Wells Conference & Events Centre - Click here

WAR OF THE WORLDS - MAGAZINE ARTICLE

The above article is used by kind permission of Dean from Model & Collectors Mart.  Click on pics for larger versions.

HG WELLS TRIVIA

H.G. Wells was driving through San Antonio, Texas and stopped to ask the way. The person he happened to ask was none other than Orson Welles who had recently broadcast "The War of the Worlds" on the radio. They got on well and spent the day together.

He appears on the sleeve of The Beatles' "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album.

His great grandson Simon Wells directed the 2002 remake of The Time Machine (based on his novel).

HG Wells - 1866 to 1946

"What really matters is what you do with what you have"

Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, on September 21st 1866. His father was a shopkeeper and a professional cricketer until he broke his leg. In his early childhood Wells developed love for literature. His mother served from time to time as a housekeeper at the nearby estate of Uppark, and young Wells studied books in the library secretly. When his father's business failed, Wells was apprenticed like his brothers to a draper. He spent the years between 1880 and 1883 in Windsor and Southsea, and later recorded them in KIPPS (1905). In 1883 Wells became a teacher/pupil at Midhurst Grammar School. He obtained a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London and studied there biology under T.H. Huxley. However, his interest faltered and in 1887 he left without a degree. He taught in private schools for four years, not taking his B.S. degree until 1890. Next year he settled in London, married his cousin Isabel and continued his career as a teacher in a correspondence college.

From 1893 Wells became a full-time writer. Wells left Isabel for one of his brightest students, Amy Catherine, whom he married in 1895. As a novelist Wells made his debut with The Time Machine, a parody of English class division, this was followed by The Island Of Dr. Moreau (1896), in which a mad scientist transforms animals into human creatures.  The Invisible Man was a Faustian story of a scientist who has tampered with nature in pursuit of superhuman powers, and The War of the Worlds, a novel of an invasion of Martians. The story appeared at a time when Schiaparell's discovery of Martian "canals" Percival Lowell's book Mars (1895) arose speculations that there could be life on the Red Planet. The narrator is an unnamed "philosophical writer" who tells about events that happened six years earlier. Martian cylinders land on earth outside London and the invaders, who have a "roundish bulk with tentacles" start to vaporize humans. The Martians build walking tripods which ruin towns. Panic spreads, London is evacuated. Martians release poisonous black smoke. However, Martians are slain "by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put on this earth." In 1930 Paramount offered the story to the Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein, but he never attempted an adaptation. Its later Hollywood version from 1953 reflected Cold War attitudes.

After World War I Wells published several non-fiction works, among them The Outline Of History (1920), The Science Of Life (1929-39), written in collaboration with Sir Julian Huxley and George Philip Wells, and Experiment In Autobiography (1934). Orson Welles' Mercury Theater radio broadcast, based on The War of the Worlds, caused a panic in the Eastern United States on October 30, 1938. In Newark, New Jersey, all the occupants of a block of flats left their homes with wet towels round their heads and in Harlem a congregation fell to its knees. Welles, who first considered the show silly, was shaken by the panic he had unleashed and promised that he would never do anything like it again. Later Welles attempted to claim authorship for the script, but it was written by Howard Koch, whose inside story of the whole episode, The panic broadcast; portrait of an event, appeared in 1970. Wells himself was not amused with the radio play. He met the young director in 1940 at a San Antonio radio station, but was at that time mellowed and advertised Welles next film, Citizen Kane.

Wells cheated on his wives repeatedly. He even demanded of his second wife the "right" to take lovers. His son with journalist Rebecca West, Anthony West, wrote about their relationship in "Aspects of a Life" (1984). He also had a child with Amber Reeves, the daughter of one of London's most prominent families. His other lovers included Odette Keun, Moura Budberg and Margaret Sanger. Wells may have fathered up to five children out of wedlock.

Wells lived through World War II in his house on Regent's Park, refusing to let the blitz drive him out of London. His last book, Mind At The End Of Its Tether (1945), expressed pessimism about mankind's future prospects. Wells died in London on August 13. 1946.

SFX MAGAZINE - MARCH 2005 - MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

As part of the March issue of SFX Magazine they supplied a booklet untitled "Masters Of The Universe, The 50 Greatest SF Pioneers ever!  They shaped science fiction as we know it!"

TOP 5

5. Stan Lee (1922-present, comic book mogul)
4. Steven Spielberg (1946-present, maker of iconic movies)
3. Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991, creator of Star Trek)
2. HG Wells (1866-1946, the father of big SF ideas)
1. George Lucas (1944-present, the big katuna)

Click on the above image for a larger version

 
Thanks to Jonathan Smith for use of the above advertisement

Cosmopolitan Magazine - HG Wells 1897 - Click on the above 3 images for a larger view
First printing in the United States of H G Wells' science-fiction classic The War of the Worlds