The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between humankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and his younger brother who escapes to Tillingham in Essex as London and Southern England are invaded by Martians. It is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon. The plot is similar to other works of invasion literature from the same period and has been variously interpreted as a commentary on the theory of evolution, imperialism, and Victorian era fears, superstitions and prejudices. Wells later noted that inspiration for the plot was the catastrophic effect of European colonisation on the Aboriginal Tasmanians. Some historians have argued that Wells wrote the book to encourage his readership to question the morality of imperialism. At the time of publication, it was classified as a scientific romance, like Wells’s earlier novel, The Time Machine. The War of the Worlds has never been out of print: it spawned numerous feature films, radio dramas, a record album, comic book adaptations, television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. It was dramatised in a 1938 radio programme, directed by and starring Orson Welles, that reportedly caused panic among listeners who did not know that the events were fictional. The narrator is a middle-class writer of philosophical papers, reminiscent of Doctor Kemp in The Invisible Man, with characteristics similar to author Wells at the time of writing. The reader learns little about the background of the narrator or indeed of anyone else in the novel. In fact, few of the principal characters are named, aside from the astronomer Ogilvy and Mrs. and Miss Elphinstone.
First Appearance “The War of the Worlds” in Pearson’s Magazine (UK, 1897) and Cosmopolitan (US, 1897)
First Publisher Pearson’s Magazine
Appearance List Books: The War of the Worlds (1898, William Heinemann), La Guerre des Mondes (1906), The War of the Worlds (1908), etc. Radio: Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds (1938 radio drama), War of the Worlds radio broadcast (1944, Santiago), War of the Worlds radio broadcast (1949, Radio Quito, Quito, Ecuador), The War of the Worlds (1950, BBC radio, 6 episodes), The Lux Radio Theater: War of the Worlds (1955, adaptation of the 1953 film). Film: The War of the Worlds (1953). TV: Studio One: Episode “The Night America Trembled” (1957), based on the Orson Welles’ Mercury Players performance of a radio play version of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds on 30 October 1938. Comic books: Le Journal de Tintin (1946–1947), Classics Illustrated #124 (1955).
Description The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between humankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and his younger brother who escapes to Tillingham in Essex as London and Southern England are invaded by Martians. It is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon. The plot is similar to other works of invasion literature from the same period and has been variously interpreted as a commentary on the theory of evolution, imperialism, and Victorian era fears, superstitions and prejudices. Wells later noted that inspiration for the plot was the catastrophic effect of European colonisation on the Aboriginal Tasmanians. Some historians have argued that Wells wrote the book to encourage his readership to question the morality of imperialism. At the time of publication, it was classified as a scientific romance, like Wells’s earlier novel, The Time Machine. The War of the Worlds has never been out of print: it spawned numerous feature films, radio dramas, a record album, comic book adaptations, television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. It was dramatised in a 1938 radio programme, directed by and starring Orson Welles, that reportedly caused panic among listeners who did not know that the events were fictional. The narrator is a middle-class writer of philosophical papers, reminiscent of Doctor Kemp in The Invisible Man, with characteristics similar to author Wells at the time of writing. The reader learns little about the background of the narrator or indeed of anyone else in the novel. In fact, few of the principal characters are named, aside from the astronomer Ogilvy and Mrs. and Miss Elphinstone.
