
The Invisible Man
Science Fiction and Fantasy
H. G. Wells

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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…
Project Gutenberg eBook #36 (updated 30 March 2026), downloaded 7 November 2026. The contents list and the two part headings ("The Coming of the Martians", "The Earth under the Martians") were not imported; the 27 chapters are unchanged.
Public domain
Copyright status last verified: 9 November 2026