The War of the Wenuses

If you think the title sounds dirty... you're probably right. In this 1898 Wells parody, Earth is re-invaded by the fearsome women of the planet Wenus, and it's up to our narrator to spend the entire book not mentioning his wife and restraining his natural inclination to kill curates with meat cleavers. It's surprisingly hilarious; my favorite jokes were the ones poking fun at Wells's attempts at verisimilitude-- the local geography and population is ridiculously overdescribed. Also: even in 1898, people were well aware that Wells's depiction of female characters was... problematic.

"My wife, in a nickel-plated Russian blouse, trimmed with celluloid pompons, aluminium pantaloons, and a pair of Norwegian Skis, looked magnificent."

That was stupid.. like Spaceballs levels of dumb... it was kinda awesome :) . So a parody of War of the Worlds that came out only weeks/months after the original book.

"My terror had fallen from me like a bath towel."

Highly recommend reading this as close to War of the Worlds as possible. Even so 100 year old comedy isn't always easy to parse.
There's some odd word choices too, it spends a lot of time describing streetnames and stuff which i think are digs at the original.
It breaks the forth wall and does allsorts of absurd parody elements. Its pretty short, certainly worth a look for fans show more of War of the Worlds.

"I stood there ecstatic, unprogressive, immoderate; while swiftly and surely ungovernable affection for all Wenuses gripped me."

Edit: Made available by the Merril Collection. show less