Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds. Read summaries of H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds . You can read a Plot Overview of the entire novel as well as Chapter-by-Chapter Summaries . To purchase a copy of The War of the Worlds on BN.com, go to the link below. Summary. Read a Plot Overview or Chapter-by-Chapter summaries of The War of the Worlds . Plot Overview Chapter Summaries. Teacher's Handbook. Teachers, check out our ideas for how you can creatively incorporate SparkNotes materials into your classroom instruction. The War of the Worlds. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The War of the Worlds , science fiction novel by H.G. Wells, first published serially by Pearson’s Magazine in the U.K. and by The Cosmopolitan magazine in the U.S. in 1897. The novel details a catastrophic conflict between humans and extraterrestrial “Martians.” It is considered a landmark work of science fiction, and it has inspired numerous adaptations and imitations. Plot summary. The War of the Worlds chronicles the events of a Martian invasion as experienced by an unidentified male narrator and his brother. The story begins a few years before the invasion. During the astronomical opposition of 1894, when Mars is closer to Earth than usual, several observatories spot flashes of light on the surface of Mars. The narrator witnesses one of these flashes through a telescope at an observatory in Ottershaw, Surrey, England. He immediately alerts his companion, Ogilvy, “the well-known astronomer.” Ogilvy quickly dismisses the idea that the flashes are an indication of life on Mars. He assures the narrator that “[t]he chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one.” The flashes continue unexplained for several nights. Early one morning, a “falling star” appears over England. It crashes on Horsell Common, a large expanse of public land near the narrator’s home in Maybury. When the narrator visits the crash site, he finds a crowd of about 20 people gathered around a large cylindrical object embedded in a sand pit. The object is made of metal, and it appears to be hollow. The narrator immediately suspects that the object came from Mars. After observing it for some time, the narrator returns to his home in Maybury. By the time he next visits the crash site, news of the landing has spread, and the number of spectators has increased significantly. The narrator’s second visit is far more eventful than his first: the cylinder opens, and he gets his first glimpse of the Martians: A big grayish, rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught the light it glistened like wet leather…. The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder; another swayed in the air. After a second Martian makes its way out of the cylinder, the narrator runs away in terror. While he hides in the woods, a small group of men (including Ogilvy) approach the cylinder with a white flag. As they near the Martians, there is a great flash of light, and the men carrying the flag are instantly incinerated. Several more flashes follow, causing the spectators to scatter. The narrator escapes back to his house, where he tells his wife what he has seen. Shortly thereafter, military forces arrive on Horsell Common, and a second cylinder lands near the first. Fighting soon breaks out between the soldiers and the Martians. The following evening, after it becomes apparent that the soldiers are no match for the Martians and their “Heat Rays,” the narrator resolves to take his wife east to Leatherhead, where he believes they will be safe. Using a horse-drawn cart rented from an oblivious innkeeper, the narrator successfully transports his wife (and a few of his belongings) to Leatherhead. Late that night, he leaves to return the cart. As he approaches Maybury, he encounters a terrifying sight—a “monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine-trees, and smashing them aside in its career.” Stupefied by the sight of the Martian “fighting-machine,” the narrator crashes the cart, thereby breaking the horse’s neck. The narrator just barely escapes detection by the Martians. Against all odds, he manages to make it back to his house. While sheltering there, he encounters a fleeing artilleryman. Cut off from his wife by a cylinder between Maybury and Leatherhead, the narrator decides to travel with the artilleryman. However, they are quickly separated. After a terrifying encounter with the Martians on the River Thames, the narrator finds an abandoned boat, which he uses to paddle toward London. Overcome by “fever and faintness,” he stops at Walton, where he meets the curate who will become his companion for the next few weeks. At this point, the narrative changes focus, and the narrator begins to tell the story of the invasion as it was experienced by his younger brother, a medical student (also unnamed) in London. According to the narrator, news of the Martian invasion was slow to spread in London. Two days after the initial attack, most Londoners were either unaware of or unconcerned about the danger presented by the Martians. Only after the Martians march upon London do the inhabitants begin to panic. The Martians release a poisonous “Black Smoke” over the city, forcing civilians to evacuate en masse. While attempting to flee to Essex, the narrator’s brother catches a group of men in the act of robbing two women. The brother bravely intervenes and saves the women. They allow him to join them in their carriage, and the three of them set out for the southeastern coast of England. After a series of unfortunate events (their pony is taken away as food by the Committee of Public Supply), the party reaches the coast, where they combine their money and buy passage to Ostend, Belgium, on a steamer. As the steamer pulls away from the shore, the brother watches a spectacular fight between a warship—the torpedo ram HMS Thunder Child —and three Martian fighting-machines. Meanwhile, the narrator and the curate plunder houses in search of food. At Sheen, they find a well-stocked house and decide to stop for a quick rest. They are almost immediately disturbed by “a blinding glare of vivid green light.” Suddenly, a cylinder strikes the ground outside, and the narrator is knocked unconscious. When he comes to, the curate tells him not to move, because the Martians are outside. The narrator and the curate decide to stay in the ruins of the house. After about a week of watching the Martians and rationing what little food they have left, their relationship begins to deteriorate. The curate eventually becomes hysterical, and the narrator is forced to knock him unconscious. The scuffle is overheard by a Martian, who—much to the narrator’s horror—stretches a tentacle into the ruins. The tentacle drags the curate’s unconscious body out of the house and nearly grabs the narrator too. The narrator hides alone in the ruins for six days. When he finally emerges from the house, he discovers that the Martians have abandoned the cylinder. After observing the wreckage around the house, the stunned narrator begins walking toward London. On the way, he once again encounters the artilleryman, who fills him in on the events of the past two weeks. According to the artilleryman, the Martians have destroyed London and set up a camp at the north end of the city. He claims it is “all over.” Humankind is simply “beat.” The artilleryman eagerly tells the narrator about his plan to live beneath London and build a community of like-minded survivors in the sewers. The narrator considers joining the artilleryman, but he ultimately decides against it. He leaves, continuing on his journey toward London. The path to London is marked by mass destruction. As he walks, the narrator sees piles upon piles of bodies. In the distance, he hears a Martian chanting “ulla” and follows the sound of its voice. Ready to end it all, the narrator approaches a fighting-machine—only to discover that the Martian inside is already dead. As it turns out, all of the Martians are dead, “slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared.” The narrator is overwhelmed, and he suffers a three-day nervous breakdown. After a kind family nurses him back to health, he makes his way back to Maybury. At his home, he discovers that his wife has also survived. In the epilogue, the narrator considers the significance of the Martian invasion and warns future generations to prepare themselves. Analysis and interpretation. Questions of order and hierarchy are at the centre of The War of the Worlds . When the Martians first land in England, they are not perceived as a threat. Most men and women—in the suburbs of London and the city—continue to go about their business. Even after the Martians kill several people, daily life is not significantly disrupted. Faced with an impending attack, the English people cling to established regimens and existing social structures. The narrator is particularly struck by this: The most extraordinary thing to my mind, of all the strange and wonderful things that happened upon that Friday, was the dovetailing of the commonplace habits of our social order with the first beginnings of the series of events that was to topple that social order headlong. As the narrator observes, the English resistance does not last. The Martian attack eventually forces the collapse of the social order. In effect, it levels all social hierarchies, putting people of all stations and classes on the same plane. Chaos ensues. People quickly turn on one another, using the loss of order as an excuse to be destructive and violent. The narrator and his brother observe a number of strange scenes: people plundering stores, men attacking women, servants abandoning their masters, trains ploughing through crowds, and so on. Wells’s depiction of chaos in the absence of artificial social structures powerfully demonstrates how important those structures are to the human sense of order. More importantly, it underscores the precariousness of the human sense of order. The Martian invasion causes the collapse of natural hierarchies too. In Wells’s novel, humans become a subordinate species. This change in position gives the narrator a new perspective on the natural world. He begins to draw parallels between the Martian relationship with humans and the human relationship with animals. For the first time in his life, he wonders “how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent lower animal.” He makes a similar analogy after emerging from the ruins of the house that sheltered him: I felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly confronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house. I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an animal among the animals, under the Martian heel. The number of human-animal comparisons increases as the novel progresses. Near the end, the narrator encounters an artilleryman who is certain that the Martians will domesticate humans. He predicts that people who are not “made for wild beasts” will end up in “nice roomy cages,” subject to “careful breeding” and “fattening food.” This is not the final outcome, but Wells does not deny that it could be. Instead, he cautions people against taking their position in the natural order for granted. He asks his readers to reconsider their relationship with the animal world. In the end, the major takeaway—for the narrator and the reader—is compassion for animals: Surely, if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity—pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion. Publication and reception. The War of the Worlds was first published serially. Wells sold the rights for The War of the Worlds in 1896. Between April and December 1897, the story was serialized simultaneously by Pearson’s Magazine in the U.K. and The Cosmopolitan in the U.S. Both versions featured illustrations by British children’s book illustrator Warwick Goble. Wells’s story subsequently appeared in serial form in several American newspapers, including William Randolph Hearst’s The New York Evening Journal and the Boston Post . Notably, the versions that appeared in The New York Evening Journal and the Boston Post were set in America rather than England. Wells did not authorize these reproductions. He protested the change in setting as a “manipulation” of his work. The War of the Worlds did not appear in book form until 1898, when it was published in the U.K. by William Heinemann. Heinemann reportedly ordered an initial print run of 10,000 copies. He advertised the novel as another work by the “Author of ‘The Time Machine.’” The initial critical reception for the novel was favourable. Nineteenth-century critics and readers alike marveled at the grandeur of Wells’s vision, and the novel was a tremendous commercial success. Within five years of its publication, it had been translated into 10 languages. Ten years after its publication, Wells recorded that The War of the Worlds had sold some 6,000 copies at its original price of six shillings (and many more copies at cheaper prices). Sales of the novel continued to increase throughout the 20th century, and it is now widely taught in schools. Wells’s novel has been in continuous print since its first publication as a novel in 1898. Adaptations. Orson Welles’s radio play remains the most famous adaptation of Wells’s novel. On October 30, 1938, Welles presented an adaptation of The War of the Worlds on his radio program, The Mercury Theatre on the Air . As Welles later told reporters, he wrote (and performed) the radio play to sound like a real news broadcast about an invasion from Mars. Some listeners who missed the introduction to Welles’s performance mistook the broadcast as actual news coverage of a Martian invasion. The resulting reaction was greatly exaggerated by the press. Headlines across the U.S. reported that “Attack from Mars in Radio Play Puts Thousands in Fear,” “Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama As Fact,” and “Radio Fake Scares Nation.” On October 31, The New York Times reported that thousands of people “called the police, newspapers, and radio stations here and in other cities of the United States and Canada seeking advice on protective measures against the raids.” In all, the broadcast is estimated to have fooled about 20 percent, or less than a million, of its listeners. A number of filmmakers have attempted to tackle The War of the Worlds . In 1953 Byron Haskin directed an Academy Award-winning adaptation of the novel starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. Haskin’s adaptation influenced many future science fiction films, including Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005), which starred Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning and featured narration by Morgan Freeman. Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” radio play is broadcast. Welles was only 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company decided to update H.G. Wells’s 19th-century science fiction novel The War of the Worlds for national radio. Despite his age, Welles had been in radio for several years, most notably as the voice of “The Shadow” in the hit mystery program of the same name. “War of the Worlds” was not planned as a radio hoax, and Welles had little idea of how legendary it would eventually become. The show began on Sunday, October 30, at 8 p.m. A voice announced: “The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in ‘War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells.” Sunday evening in 1938 was prime-time in the golden age of radio, and millions of Americans had their radios turned on. But most of these Americans were listening to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy “Charlie McCarthy” on NBC and only turned to CBS at 8:12 p.m. after the comedy sketch ended and a little-known singer went on. By then, the story of the Martian invasion was well underway. Welles introduced his radio play with a spoken introduction, followed by an announcer reading a weather report. Then, seemingly abandoning the storyline, the announcer took listeners to “the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.” Putrid dance music played for some time, and then the scare began. An announcer broke in to report that “Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory” had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Then the dance music came back on, followed by another interruption in which listeners were informed that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer’s field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey. Soon, an announcer was at the crash site describing a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder. “Good heavens,” he declared, “something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here’s another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me … I can see the thing’s body now. It’s large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it… it … ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate.” The Martians mounted walking war machines and fired “heat-ray” weapons at the puny humans gathered around the crash site. They annihilated a force of 7,000 National Guardsman, and after being attacked by artillery and bombers the Martians released a poisonous gas into the air. Soon “Martian cylinders” landed in Chicago and St. Louis. The radio play was extremely realistic, with Welles employing sophisticated sound effects and his actors doing an excellent job portraying terrified announcers and other characters. An announcer reported that widespread panic had broken out in the vicinity of the landing sites, with thousands desperately trying to flee. The Federal Communications Commission investigated the unorthodox program but found no law was broken. Networks did agree to be more cautious in their programming in the future. The broadcast helped Orson Welles land a contract with a Hollywood studio, and in 1941 he directed, wrote, produced, and starred in Citizen Kane —a movie that many have called the greatest American film ever made. War of the Worlds gets a sequel 119 years on – but what about all the unofficial ones? When HG Wells saw off the invading Martians at the end of his 1897 science fiction classic War of the Worlds, he didn’t envisage them making a comeback. But that hasn’t stopped a century’s worth of conjecture about what happened next. It seems that, despite the best efforts of HG Wells and the common cold, you can’t keep a good Martian down: 119 years on, a sequel to War of the Worlds has been announced, to be penned by Stephen Baxter, one of Britain’s brightest high-concept science fiction writers. Co-author with Terry Pratchett of the Long Earth series of novels, the most recent of which was published after Pratchett’s death in March, Baxter has also collaborated with Alastair Reynolds and Arthur C Clarke, as well as having a wide body of solo work under his belt. With publisher Gollancz unveiling the title of Baxter’s sequel as The Massacre of Mankind, we can safely say this is not going to be any boring summit meeting. Due out in January 2017, The Massacre of Mankind is set in late 1920s London. Thirty years after Wells’s book ended, the Martians have licked their wounds, beefed up their immune systems, and readied themselves for a second round against the bacteria that beat them back the first time. As Britain put up the most resistance to their first invasion, they have made ol’ Blighty the target for their fresh attack. Lucky, lucky us. While Wells (also known as “the daddy of modern SF” according to Baxter) was drawing on traditions that dated back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and he had important near-contemporaries such as Jules Verne, Baxter says Wells “did more than any other writer to shape the form and themes of modern science fiction, and indeed through his wider work exerted a profound influence on the history of the 20th century.” Despite not being endorsed by the Wells estate, The Massacre of Mankind is the first sequel to War of the Worlds to be published after the copyright expires on HG Wells’ original tale in December 2016, distinguishing it from all previous unofficial spinoffs and tie-ins. Wells himself never wrote a sequel, or showed interested in doing so, but many other writers have before. The first of many unofficial sequels to Wells’s novel came out in the US just weeks after the serial publication of the original novel had ended. Perhaps taking a little umbrage that all the action in the original book was in Britain, the Boston Post ran a serial in 1898 called Edison’s Conquest of Mars, by Garrett P Serviss, which featured the real-life American inventor taking the war back to those pesky Martians on their own turf. Edison’s Conquest of Mars by Garrett P Serviss. One of the most curious responses to Wells’s tale – if not exactly a sequel – was released in 1962 in the form of a pamphlet by Russian author Lazar Lagin. Major Wellandyou followed a traitorous British army officer and his collaboration with the Martians. Lagin’s interesting title is apparently a Russian pun on what is perceived as a typical English greeting: “Well. And You?” In 1975, father-and-son writing team Manly Wade Wellman and Wade Wellman took Wells’s story and mashed it with everyone’s favourite pipe- smoking sleuth: the product was Sherlock Holmes’s War of the Worlds, in which the Great Detective turns his abilities to solving the conundrum of the invasion (hint: it’s those big three-legged machines throwing people into a basket at the back). Two decades later, Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen also mashed up Victorian literature in comic book form, and also including a retelling of the War of the Worlds. For true sequels, perhaps one of the most innovative is the comic book Scarlet Traces, created by Britons Ian Edginton and D’Israeli and published by Dark Horse in 2003. Like Baxter’s forthcoming novel, Scarlet Traces is set some years after the original invasion, with the added twist that Britain has ingeniously reverse-engineered the left-behind Martian technology to create advances in everyday life – including a devastating heat-ray that the British Empire has found quite useful overseas. A special mention: Eric Brown’s short story Ulla Ulla (named for the eerie call of the Martian war machines). The short story, which appeared in 2002’s Mammoth Book of Science Fiction, follows the first manned mission to Mars, finding evidence that War of the Worlds was actually rooted in fact. This article was amended on 9 December 2015. An earlier version described Stephen Baxter’s book as an “official” sequel to The War of the Worlds. His book has not been endorsed by the HG Wells estate, but it is the first sequel to The War of the Worlds to be published after the copyright in Wells’s novel expires in December 2016. How to Watch War of the Worlds Season 2 Online Free. The second season of the latest adaptation of “War of the Worlds” premieres Sunday, June 6 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on EPIX. If you don’t have cable or don’t have Epix, here are some ways you can watch “War of the Worlds” streaming online for free: Heavy may earn an affiliate commission if you sign up via a link on this page. Amazon Prime’s Epix Channel. Amazon Prime subscribers (Prime comes with a 30-day free trial) can watch all live and on-demand Epix content on the Prime Epix channel. You can try both Amazon Prime and the Epix Channel at no cost with a free trial right here: Once you’re signed up for the Prime Epix Channel, you can watch “War of the Worlds” live or on-demand on the Amazon Video app on your Roku, Roku TV, Amazon Fire TV or Firestick, Apple TV, Chromecast, Nvidia Shield, Xiaomi, Echo Show or Echo Spot, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, various Smart TV’s, Android TV, iPhone, Android phone, iPad or Android tablet. You can also watch on your computer via the Amazon website. Philo TV. Epix is available as an add-on to Philo’s main channel bundle. You can include both the main package and the Epix add-on in your free seven-day trial: Once signed up for Philo, you can watch “War of the Worlds” live or on-demand on the Philo app , which is available on your Roku, Roku TV, Amazon Fire TV or Firestick, Apple TV, Chromecast (compatible on Android mobile), iPhone, Android phone, iPad or Android tablet. You can also watch on your computer on the Philo website. FuboTV. Epix is available as an add-on to FuboTV’s main 100-plus-channel package. Both the main channel bundle and the Epix add-on can be included in your free seven-day trial: Once signed up for FuboTV, you can watch “War of the Worlds” live or on-demand on the FuboTV app , which is available on your Roku, Roku TV, Amazon Fire TV or Firestick, Apple TV, Chromecast, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV, Android TV, iPhone, Android phone, iPad or Android tablet. You can also watch on your computer via the FuboTV website. Sling TV. Epix is available as its own standalone package through Sling TV, meaning you can sign up for Epix whether or not you also sign up for one of Sling TV’s main “Sling Orange” or “Sling Blue” channel bundles. This option doesn’t include a free trial, but you can get Epix for a total of $5 per month through Sling, which is the cheapest option if you plan on keeping it long term: Once signed up for Sling TV, you can watch “War of the Worlds” live or on-demand on the Sling TV app , which is available on your Roku, Roku TV, Amazon Fire TV or Firestick, Apple TV, Chromecast, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV, LG Smart TV, Android TV, airTV Mini, Oculus, Portal, iPhone, Android phone, iPad or Android tablet. You can also watch on your computer via the Sling TV website. ‘War of the Worlds’ Season 2 Preview. After an action-packed first season, the latest adaptation of H.G. Wells acclaimed novel “War of the Worlds” is back for a second season on EPIX. The press release for season two teases: In the first season of “War of the Worlds,” an alien attack all but wiped out mankind, with just a handful of humans fighting to survive. And no one felt more rocked by the invasion than Emily (Daisy Edgar-Jones), who discovered she may have her own strange personal connection to the aliens. Season two of “War of the Worlds” sees our characters left reeling by the possibility that the invaders could be human. A tense fight to take back the planet awaits them. For some, the sheer desperation to survive will lead them to contemplate sacrificing one of their own… When we last saw the survivors, Sophia (Emilie de Preissac) was hit in an alien attack. Emily and Sacha (Mathieu Torloting) experienced a vision at the same time that gave them clues about the aliens — Sacha chose to head to England, hoping to meet Emily, his daughter, while Emily found an alien ship in the river Thames. Inside, she discovered newborn babies and an alien that looked shockingly human. The description for the season two premiere reads, “Four months after Emily disappeared onto an alien ship, the London survivors have set up a resistance base from which they plan to fight back. The aliens have since appeared and, though Bill (Byrne) cannot understand how, they look exactly like humans.” According to the New York Post review of season two, the second season sees bodies littering the streets of London. Mercenaries have taken over the city and are plotting attacks on the alien ships. Bill is still trying to figure out the aliens’ human-like DNA, while Emily reappears saying she can’t remember anything from her time away but sporting a new weird tattoo on her hand. Set in the United Kingdom and France, this modern retelling of the classic novel stars de Preissac, Edgar-Jones, Torloting, Gabriel Byrne, Lea Drucker, Natasha Little, Stephane Caillard, Adel Bencherif, Ty Tennant, Stephen Campbell Moore, Bayo Gbadamosi, and Aaron Heffernan. Actress Elizabeth McGovern of “Downton Abbey” fame also starred in the first season, but her character, Bill’s wife Helen, was killed in the season’s penultimate episode.