H. G. Wells

The War of the Worlds

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Cover of The War of the Worlds

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Language
English
First published
1898
Reading time
260 minutes
Chapters
27 chapters

About this book

In the 1890s a strange cylinder falls on the common near Woking, outside London, and what climbs out of it has no wish to talk.

Told by a narrator who flees across a burning countryside, H. G. Wells's 1898 novel is the first great story of invasion from another planet, and it still feels frighteningly real. It is also a pointed question to an empire about how it treats others. Read it for the tension and for scenes that films have borrowed ever since.

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…

I. The Eve of the War.

About this edition

Chapters

27 chapters