The War of the Worlds by HG Wells, a Book Review

Why The War of the Worlds Matters

As a child, while confined to bed because of an illness, Robert Hutchings Goddard (1882–1945) read H G Wells’ The War of the Worlds and became captivated with rockets and outer space. Goddard was a pioneer in liquid-fuelled rocketry and made significant contributions to the field. In addition, spaceflight pioneers Hermann Oberth (1894–1989 and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935 read science-fiction novels and stories by writers such as Wells and French novelist Jules Verne (1828–1905). Will The War of the Worldsby HG Wells inspire the innovative streak in you?

Cover of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds

Why Herbert George Wells is Qualified to Write The War of the World

How does an author acquire the scientific knowledge and imagination to write such a book? “Herbert George Wells won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science at South Kensington in 1884, where he studied under biologist T. H. Huxley. Subsequently, he worked as a teacher and then as a journalist, producing a series of scientific speculations for a number of leading periodicals including the Fortnightly Review and Nature.” (Encyclopedia of World Biography, Vol. 16. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2004. p195-196)

Wells was an excellent debater and debated with Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), both well-known US presidents. In 1888, Wells presented a paper titled, “Are the Planets Habitable?” to the Debating Society at the Royal College of Science. He was also very interested in Charles Darwin’s work on natural selection – his theory on evolution. “[Wells’] legacy in terms of science, technology, and ethics lies in his imaginative application of science to invention, his hopefulness about what science may produce for humanity, but also his warnings about what the abuse of science may mean for the human race.” (Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics, Ed. Carl Mitcham. Vol. 4. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. p2061-2062. John S. Partington)

HG Wells’ The War of the World is an invasion story. However, it’s an invasion by beings from another planet. It is about interplanetary warfare and is written in a journalistic style. The names of newspapers are mentioned in the context of journalists reporting the invasion of the Martians. The narrator of The War of the Worlds is a philosophical writer who is never named. He relates his encounter with the Martians who invade earth and includes his brother’s encounter with them. You know that the narrator and his brother survive the invasion because the story is told after the fact. In the story, the brothers do not meet so you assume that they got together after and talked about their experiences. You believe what the narrator is telling you, because there is a certain kind of honesty about him. And the journalistic style makes the story believable.

The Martians invade earth in a cylindrical mechanism. Humans believe that they are superior to other beings. For days in 1894, missiles are launched from Mars to Earth. The narrator and Ogilvy a well known astronomer at Ottershaw are observing using a telescope. The missiles are launched for 10 days and then they finally stop. Ogilvy surmises that it is unlikely that there is organic evolution on Mars.

The narrator lives in Maybury, and the first alien craft lands at Horsell Common in England. Ogilvy is the one who discovers it. Ogilvy, Henderson, Stent, Royal and several workmen pry the craft open. There are several onlookers when the craft is opened. The narrator describes what he sees, “I presently saw something stirring within the shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two luminous disks—like eyes. Then something resembling a grey snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me–-and then another….The mass that framed them [the eyes], the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of what quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air.”

People are terrified and yet fascinated by what they are seeing. After they pry the craft open and see what’s inside Ogilvy, Henderson, Stent, Royal and the workmen leave hurriedly. A Deputation including Ogilvy, Henderson and Stent returns and the Martians incinerate them. The narrator relates the terror he is feeling.

When the warfare begins, people start to evacuate. The narrator loads a few things that are meaningful, and takes his wife to Leatherhead where he has a cousin, thinking that she will be safe there, and returns to Maybury. The warfare is very one-sided – the Martians are in 100-feet tripods, which protect them. They incinerate anything and anyone in sight and they emit a poisonous gas into the air. And more Martians invade earth, and they unmercifully attack humans, although humans outnumber them. They are more organized than humans in their attack, and they also work together as a team.

The War of the Worlds describes the Martians’ journey from town to town, county to county, and the destruction they unleash along the way. When the narrator returns home, he is watching what’s going on, from inside his house. While looking through the window, he sees a soldier, and whispers to him to come inside. The soldier updates the narrator on the fate of the other soldiers in his regiment. It quickly becomes very clear to the soldier and the narrator that it’s unsafe to remain where they are. When they are leaving, the soldier tells the narrator to take food with him, and they both stuff food inside their pockets. That’s a great lesson for the narrator, and it comes in handy later on.

A big part of the story takes place when the narrator encounters the curate, while trying to evade the Martians. The curate is a religious man, a pastor, whose church is destroyed by the Martians. He asks the narrator, “Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done? The morning service was over, I was walking through the roads to clear my brain for the afternoon, and then—fire, earthquake, death! As if it were Sodom and Gomorrah! All our work undone, all the work—What are these Martians?”

The narrator views what’s unfolding before his eyes through a scientific lens, which contrasts with the curate’s religious view. The curate talks about the beginning of the end, and the great and terrible day of the Lord, and the narrator screams at him, telling him to man-up. “‘Be a man!’ said I. ‘You are scared out of your wits! What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes, and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think God had exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent.’”

They travel together, and it’s much of the same. The constant whining by the clergy and the narrator wishing his companion wasn’t with him. They end up in a house, and in the pantry they find bread, steak, ham and beer. The house suffers from the terror the Martians are unleashing, and collapses on them. The narrator is hurt and unconscious for a short time. They are trapped under the house for nearly two weeks. However, they get to closely observe the Martians.

The curate personifies everything you would not expect in a religious person. He is extremely greedy and is only thinking about himself. Had the narrator not intervened and rationed the food, the curate would have consumed it all. Yes they were facing a very stressful time, but would you not expect a pastor to be at peace with the strong likelihood that he is going to die? He would be transitioning to another world that’s very different and some might say better than ours.

They take turns to look through a hole at what the Martians are doing outside the house. The narrator gets a close up view of them. He sees the Martians consuming the blood of humans to satiate themselves and get the nutrients they need to survive. The curate becomes mad being in a confined space and from the stress of the situation. He starts to scream, which alerts the Martians to the presence of humans. The narrator hits him over the head to quiet him down, but it’s too late. He hides when he sees the Martian invade their hiding place. The curate is killed.

When the Martians leave, the narrator slips out of the house, and shortly after, he encounters the soldier he had met previously. The soldier relates his plan to survive the invasion, and the narrator gets caught up in the vision. But after observing the soldier for a few days he realizes that the soldier is all talk and no action. The plan is essentially one for “ethnic” cleansing – forced cleansing of the weaker and marginalized. The narrator is ashamed of himself, and realizes that he has to find his wife, who he temporarily forgot about.

I was very emotional while reading The War of the Worlds by HG Wells, and felt that the way the Martians died was very anticlimactic. But a few days later, I changed my mind, and felt it was very profound and powerful. Technology does not destroy the Martians, bacteria does. Humans are immune to many bacteria, but there isn’t any bacteria on Mars. They drink the blood of humans and introduce bacteria into their systems, which they couldn’t withstand. Indeed it was survival of the fittest.

I was also distressed while reading the book because I felt that the soldiers were uncoordinated with their attack, and I was feeling so helpless because I was right there with the narrator. With all his education, the narrator could not conceive of a plan to stop the invasion. When the soldiers accidentally kill one of the Martians, I expected them to evaluate what they did so that they could replicate the action, but I guess that wasn’t the point. The narrator returns home believing his wife is dead after hearing accounts from others about the destruction of Leatherhead. She returns home as well, with the narrator’s cousin, so they have all survived the invasion.

A big lesson that I learned from The War of the Worlds is that community is very important. During the invasion, most people were acting as individuals and taking care of their own needs instead of working in a coordinated manner. I recommend The War of the Worlds by HG Wells.

Works by H G Wells

The Time Machine (The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds (Everyman’s Library (Cloth))) (1895)

The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)

The Invisible Man (1897)

The First Men in the Moon (1901),

The Wonderful Visit (1895)

The Sea Lady (The Work Collection of H G Wells Set.13 (The Salvaging Of Civilisation, The Sea Lady, The Sleeper Awakes)) (1902)

“The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents” (1893)

“The Red Room” (1896),

The War of the Worlds (1898)

“The Door in the Wall”

Anticipations (1902)

Kipps(1905)

Ann Veronica (1909)

The History of Mr Polly (Penguin Classics) (1910)

The New Machiavelli (1911)

The World Set Free (1913)

Boon (Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and The Last Trump; Being a First Selection from the Literary Remains of George Boon, Appropriate to the Times) (1915)

The Outline of History H. G. Wells Volume I & II (1920)

A Short History of the World (1922)

Men Like Gods (1923)

The Science of Life (1930)

The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind, in Two Volumes (1931)

The Shape of Things To Come (1933)

Things to Come (1936)

Mind at the End of its Tether; and The Happy Turning: A Dream of Life (1945)

The Essential H. G. Wells Collection (38 books and story collections) [Illustrated]

For those who have a Kindle, you can download any of the books by clicking here.

War Of The Worlds Radio Broadcast Part 1

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War Of The Worlds Radio Broadcast Part 2