The War of the Worlds

Sign up

My Books

Browse ▾

Community ▾

Join Goodreads

and meet your next favorite book!

Sign Up Now

Book details

The War of the Worlds

by H.G. Wells

 3.81  215,927 ratings  6,520 reviews

Want to Read 

Rate

Write a review

With H.G. Wells’ other novels, The War of the Worldswas one of the first and greatest works of science fiction ever to be written. Even long before man had learned to fly, H.G. Wells wrote this story of the Martian attack on England. These unearthly creatures arrive in huge cylinders, from which they escape as soon as the metal is cool. The first falls near Woking and is regarded as a curiosity rather than a danger until the Martians climb out of it and kill many of the gaping crowd with a Heat-Ray. These unearthly creatures have heads four feet in diameter and colossal round bodies, and by manipulating two terrifying machines – the Handling Machine and the Fighting Machine – they are as versatile as humans and at the same time insuperable. They cause boundless destruction. The inhabitants of the Earth are powerless against them, and it looks as if the end of the World has come. But there is one factor which the Martians, in spite of their superior intelligence, have not reckoned on. It is this which brings about a miraculous conclusion to this famous work of the imagination.