well-written, but I'm not usually a huge fan of science fiction, especially when the Martians' oh-so-advanced technology and Earthlings' weaponry are both outdated. so I stopped 40 pages shy of the end. I guess it's a testament to his skill, though, that I kept thinking about it for awhile afterwards. ( )

A very early novel about aliens invading Earth. By now most people have seen one of the movie versions, but this is still worth reading. It still amazes me what Wells could imagine over 100 years ago. By today's standards this is very short, but still a great book. ( )

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. Mostly the science worked, it was well written, and at times the action was gripping. Very cool classic read. ( )

Sadly, I just couldn't get into The War of the Worlds. It dragged from word one. It was short and didn't take a long time to read, but it seemed like forever. I've been recently coming to appreciate some alien stories, but this one fell flat. The ending struck me as an easy way to end the novel and left me feeling unfulfilled. ( )

A great genre-defining example of the sometimes perilous world of classic science fiction. The Time Machine was much better and much more clearly written. But War of the Worlds is a worthy read. ( )

As a young teenager I was fascinated by Jeff Wayne's musical version of War of the Worlds. I loved the music and the thought of those Martian machines storming the landscape sparked my imagination. This was further fuelled by the BBC's amazing drama The Tripods based on the John Christopher novel which borrowed heavily from Wells.

Let's face it, who hasn't borrowed from Wells? Anyone who can influence Orson Wells gets my vote. Wells was a genius. I detected plenty of influences from earlier novels though like House on the Borderland and it is definitely a book tat joins the dots in terms of literary history.

Unlike much sci-fi of that era, I actually enjoyed it, in particular the opening chapters. Once the Martians had bedded in and the narrator was on his own and meets the Artilleryman though, things got a bit philosophical for me as sci-fi is wont to do in my experience (with the ultimate Martian novel Stranger in a Strange Land being the ultimate example).

A valuable novel and a decent read too. ( )

My very first book - read it in grade school. ( )

i don't like sci fi or wells. i listened to this and couldn't concentrate. it seemed over written and dull. ( )

There is of course only one science fiction audio play that anyone has ever heard of, and that is Orson Welles' 1938 adaptation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. I was delighted to find it downloadable from here. Anyone with the slightest interest in Wells, Welles or audio sf plays needs to hear it. It is only loosely based on the original novel; the brilliant introduction is retained, but then we are into light music interrupted by increasingly desperate news bulletins and horrible events, culminating with Times Square and the rest of New York succumbing to poison gas. That takes us to the 40-minute mark, at which point we are reminded that this is a work of fiction; and then the last third is essentially a post-holocaust survival story, Welles' Martians having been much more thorough in their devastation than Wells' originals. And at the very end, Welles himself steps out of character to remind everyone that it is Halloween. The discerning listener will have had no difficulty working out that it was fictional even if they tuned in after the first two minutes, but of course not every listener has the time to be discerning; my own adopted country was convulsed for days after a deliberate media hoax three years ago, so I can believe both that there was a significant public reaction to Welles' broadcast, and also that it makes an even better story if exaggerated. Anyway, it's essential material for any sf enthusiast. ( )

As a story, this book still holds up as a good read. I particularly liked the descriptions of the martian machines and thought how much more frightening these were then any of the movie versions that have followed. This is a classic in the best since of the word, the story is good and competently told with some very good writing, particularly some great descriptions of the aftermath of a devastating and utterly alien event. ( )

This book is good for people who like sience fiction. It is about how aliens take over the world and humans struggle for survival. Also if you like battles this book is packed with battles against aliens. ( )

Pods hit Earth from Mars. Aliens begin there siege on mankind , using super advanced weaponry and battle techniques, it seems improbable humans will survive. Follow this first person narrative of a professor who witnesses the war of the worlds.

Great classic story. H. G. Wells was a brilliant man and very creative writer. If you put this book into the context of the time it was written it's amazing how accurate he was with his predictions of future technologies. Written in 1897 he was allready imagining flame-throwers, space pods, bio-warfare and robots. Amazing! ( )

WAR OF THE WORLDS

For my choice reading this summer I read War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. It was an interesting read. I wasn’t really sure I’d enjoy it because back in sixth grade I had attempted to read it but after opening the book to a random page I realized I wasn’t able to tell what was going on at all thanks to the author’s British writing style. However, this time around I was actually able to navigate my way through the book and it turned out to be a good read.
I was sort of confused at first; I figured the aliens would just come down and start destroying everything right off the bat. Instead some people got killed and then everything went back to normal. It was really odd to me because if I heard that aliens had landed on earth and had fried some people I’d probably start heading for the hills, but instead everyone went about their normal lives. That puzzled me a lot, how could they go through their same daily routines when aliens were already staking out their first plot of land on earth? I couldn’t seem to understand that, and I still really don’t.
As soon as the alien’s were ready to start the invasion however, things got a lot more interesting. It wasn’t interesting because people were being killed, but the need to survive, the need to stay sane despite everything crashing down around you, and the futility of staying alive only knowing that in the future you’d be enslaved by these things. It was this unstoppable wave sweeping over the world and everyone was racing to get away from it, but even if they outran it, eventually the entire world would be under this new empire and there’d be no escaping it then.
I think the best part was when the priest and main character were trapped in the house. The priest was slowly sliding into a state of insanity and it was only because he saw this could the main character keep sane. At this point I really began to dislike the priest. The main character was smart and logical, having rations to keep the food as long as possible, while the priest simply wanted to eat it all. I got infuriated at the priest when he started threatening to yell out to the aliens just to get some food. Eventually the priest just went completely insane and went to have the aliens kill him. This was probably the most exciting part of the book. Everything happened at once, the priest went completely insane and went to commit suicide, the main character almost killed the priest to make him stop yelling, but instead held back. That really showed a lot of character in the main character. Despite the aliens killing the priest anyway, the main character had even through the apocalypse kept sane and moral enough not to kill another man.
I really wish the ending hadn’t been ruined for me. I’d actually seen the second half of the newest War of the Worlds movie and because of that I knew the aliens would die of disease which really ruined part of the excitement for me. I probably would have thought H.G. Wells ended the book on a horribly depressing note that there was no stopping the aliens and soon all of mankind would be enslaved. Or maybe I would have dreamed up ways that mankind could have rallied together and beat back the aliens as they had already killed two (despite the first one really being a fluke).
I thought it was interesting though how H.G. Wells had given the perspective that we were really not much different than the aliens; we had come into power and taken over the world really. The alien’s eating us to them was really no different to us eating any animal. This whole view gave me perspective on things. Animals are really just trying to survive as the humans were just trying to survive. I also thought how the machines and weapons of the aliens while seeming completely foreign to the humans, must be like a house or maybe my cell phone or computer is foreign to a mouse or a bird.
Despite already knowing the ending, the book was still thrilling and H.G. Wells is a genius for not only thinking of such a great ending that I would have never thought of, but also being able to write a book about alien invaders that in every way relates to how “human invaders” took over the world.

War of the Worlds is a book that tells the story of a man, the narrator, and his plight through England in order to find his wife after an alien attack on the world. I enjoyed the book very much, especially the characters. They were very developed, considering that there were a few reoccurring ones. I also liked the author’s attention to detail. The settings were really well put together. I disliked the lack of action. One would think that a book about Martians attacking would be violent, but it wasn’t.
The characters in the book were the most likable part. I thought that they were very well developed. The book was an average length, and there were only five or six important and reoccurring characters, so it is no wonder that they were very developed and understood characters. The main character, who also narrates the story, is a very detailed character, because it is easy to see his goal throughout the story, and figure out his personality. He is a caring person, but will only do what he needs to survive.
Another thing that I liked was the very detailed descriptions. The author made the settings very clear and easy to picture. The settings didn’t change much, like the characters, so they were familiar, and easy to understand what was going on at the time. Everything that happened in the book was very precise with the amount of detail given by the author. There were very few issues with the details. I liked the amount of detail given by HG Wells a lot.
The lack of action was a dislike of mine. The story of a Martian attack seems like there would be a lot of action, but there wasn’t. It did leave room for more detail, but that was somewhat less important with not as much happening in the well described locations. It made the book, which was relatively short seem very long and less engaging. There wasn’t even that much dialogue, so not much was happening. Where there was action, it was in very quick short bursts, and was hard to follow, making the pace very inconsistent, and not as enjoyable.
War of the Worlds is an excellent book. Though it has a slow pace, with few fast parts, the characters and details make it an extraordinary book. It is a good book for a committed reader, because it is not an action-packed book as the title implies. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. ( )

My first instinct upon reading this book is (as usual) that the science is just way off. But then I remember that this book was written in 1898! I'm sure back then it was way ahead of it's time.

This book is much more The Invisible Man than The Time Machine. It's introspective and is a lot more about mankind in general than the attack of Martians specifically.

I enjoyed the book, but I'm pretty sure that it couldn't truthfully be made into an entertaining movie, so I'll probably be taking that one off my netflix list. ( )

War of the Worlds was a little slow for me, and also a little cheesy, but it is a revolutionary book for its time (and pretty short) so it's worthwhile to read. It was hard for me to get attached to the main character and that is key for me liking books, but it was fun to see what things H.G. Wells came up with in a time when science fiction literature didn't exist. ( )

The grand-daddy of Earth invasion stories has HG Wells typically marrying the mundane and parochial with the fantastic. How his characters struggle to throw off the shackles of their prejudices and preconceptions. Wells is acutely aware of the limitations of man - he seems to me to marvel at the precociousness and naivety of our human endeavours. The magnificence of the scientific crusade is exaggerated by the impossibility of us ever living up to it. We are at once incompetent and irrrepressible. It seems a wonderfully pragmatic and optimistic viewpoint. Hurray for HG Wells, even if he does invent the bain of so many sci-fi stories, the anti-climatic deus ex machina ending. ( )

I thought this book started out a little slow. It didn't really grab my attention until about half-way through, but once it did I really enjoyed it. ( )

I thought this book started out a little slow. It didn't really grab my attention until about half-way through, but once it did I really enjoyed it. ( )

#790 on the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. Must different from the new version of the film, and I’m not not a huge fan of HG Wells and his scientific stories about life in a different century with technology. He is brave to take on new and interesting subjects that at the time where never discussed and assumed that some the 21st Century we would be landing on Mars and having actual alien attacks.

Gives you something to think about.

Last year I read [The Island of Dr. Moreau] and was not at all enthused, so I undertook this with a bit of trepidation. Moreau made me feel vaguely ill and did not help me understand Wells' distinction as "the father of science fiction" at all. This book helped me understand it on several levels and revived my interest in the classics of the scifi genre.

My edition (the Signet Classics version that mooched) had an afterword by Isaac Asimov, which besides being wonderfully written, helped put the book into context, which allowed me to drain even more meaning from the book that I already had. Unlike in Moreau, I saw where Wells' observations of humanity and philosophical leanings came in. His descriptions of chaos brought on by the Martian's terror and destruction could have been true in the late 1800's, the 1950's, or now. The ideas of men with whom the narrator spoke would be the same no matter what decade they were in. And while the science may have been proven to be false, the idea of otherworldly invasion is certainly still seen as terrifying.

Asimov's afterword further brought up the parallels of the conquering European colonizers and the crushing Martian overlords. While this did not occur to me while reading the novel, it allowed me to drain a little more insight from Wells' head, which was a pleasure. It also allowed to further appreciate the timelessness of some of Wells' passages, particularly the "for neither do men live nor die in vain", as well as the strongest opening of any novel I've read this year.

While Moreau did not age particularly well, I believe [The War of the Worlds] will continue to be easy to read no matter how many years pass and new scifi novels are written. I recommend it to all scifi fans as a way to understand the basis of the genre and develop an appreciation for the timelessness of certain novels (which I find a particular downfall with many scifi novels). ( )

Der ungekrönte König des Genres, das wohl berühmteste Hörspiel aller Zeiten. Unerreicht - unerreichbar - brilliant und folgenreich. ( )

War of the Worlds is a classic horror story. It is also the basis for most science-fiction as science answers every question the book poses. The 2005 movie was a good representation of the book. Also, I found a copy of Orsen Wells' 1930s recording of War of the Worlds, which is fun to listen to at night. ( )

Link to a review on my personal website. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1194445...

I had forgotten just how good this is. Its 200 pages far outshine all later (and mostly longer) invasion-of-Earth stories (or even just disaster stories like The Stand). It feels so very fresh, one of the basic plots of science fiction being written for the first time. Yes, of course it's strongly reliant on tales of human wars, both those set in the contemporary late nineteenth century and those set in the (then) near future; but this chilling sentence - of mildly dodgy grammar but impeccable pace - in the first paragraph makes it clear that this is not about the Germans:

Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

In the earlier chapters, there's a fixation with circumstantial detail - especially of the geography of Surrey - which gives the whole narrative an immediacy which is curiously intensified as the conflict goes on and fewer and fewer characters get names - 'the artilleryman', 'the curate', and rather oddly to today's reader, 'my wife'. (And 'my brother', though his lady friends, the Elphinstones, do get names.)

So much here is reminiscent of later stories and indeed of history - the rescue of the English refugees by small boats from the rest of Europe is an odd inversion of Dunkirk; the tripods pop up in John Christopher; the gas warfare waged by the aliens against London was soon to happen in real life.
Anyway, a really excellent, short read. ( )