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The War of the Worlds

by H. G. Wells

‘But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited? . . . Are we or they Lords of the World? . . . And how are all things made for man?’ KEPLER (quoted in _The Anatomy of Melancholy_)

Contents

BOOK ONE.—THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS

I. THE EVE OF THE WAR. II. THE FALLING STAR. III. ON HORSELL COMMON. IV. THE CYLINDER OPENS. V. THE HEAT-RAY. VI. THE HEAT-RAY IN THE CHOBHAM ROAD. VII. HOW I REACHED HOME. VIII. FRIDAY NIGHT. IX. THE FIGHTING BEGINS. X. IN THE STORM. XI. AT THE WINDOW. XII. WHAT I SAW OF THE DESTRUCTION OF WEYBRIDGE AND SHEPPERTON. XIII. HOW I FELL IN WITH THE CURATE. XIV. IN LONDON. XV. WHAT HAD HAPPENED IN SURREY. XVI. THE EXODUS FROM LONDON. XVII. THE “THUNDER CHILD”.

BOOK TWO.—THE EARTH UNDER THE MARTIANS

I. UNDER FOOT. II. WHAT WE SAW FROM THE RUINED HOUSE. III. THE DAYS OF IMPRISONMENT. IV. THE DEATH OF THE CURATE. V. THE STILLNESS. VI. THE WORK OF FIFTEEN DAYS. VII. THE MAN ON PUTNEY HILL. VIII. DEAD LONDON. IX. WRECKAGE. X. THE EPILOGUE.

BOOK ONE THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS

I. THE EVE OF THE WAR.

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 scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. 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. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.