The War of the Worlds [novel]

The War of the Worlds is a novel written in 1898 by H.G. Wells. The novel has been overshadowed by movies, a record album, and a broadcast in 1938 by Orson Welles, which made people angry because it was never said that the broadcast story was fictional, leaving some people to probably believe that it was true. Or maybe they just didn't like to hear it. The novel was originally written in serial format Pearson's Magazine in the UK and by Cosmopolitan magazine in the US. 

The story is told in the first person. Its told from the narrator's point of view and then tells his brother's account of the invasion. Nothing is known about the characters personally. In fact, here is a novel where hardly anything is known about the characters other than that he's a philosophical writer and married. The aliens land in London and all hell breaks loose, literally. The Martians have a Heat-Ray gun that they use to burn down everything in sight. Not only that, but they have a black poisonous cloud that kills humans too.

The Martians are described first as not having chins. They have small bodies, round heads. They have these tripod mechanical vehicles they use to lay waste to London. They eat kill humans and inject their blood, sort of like zombies.  The narrator spends a lot of time not unlike the nuclear video game Fallout, hiding out in houses, searching for food, and avoiding contact with the Martians with fear for his life, believing his wife to be dead.

The writing style here is formal. Old school. In fact, I could see high schoolers reading this novel back in the 50s or 60s, but today's millennials would not like this in the least bit. They would find the prose wooden. In fact, if I wasn't such a fan of classical books, having gone as far back as Voltaire's Micromegas, Sir Tomas More's Utopia, Cavendish's Blazing World, Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, and Shelly's Frankenstein, I might find this prose to be a bit wooden. 

However, it is precisely because I am familiar with these works of antiquity that I can see how great Well's prose really is. I must admit that some of the words, phrases, and sentences were lost in translation to me. But that only happened a few times, and if I couldn't interpret what Wells was saying, I could always look up the old school phrases online. That's how I got through all those old classical works. Wells knows how to describe things, with a lot of detail. There's tons of exposition, dialogue between characters, but only just bits and pieces of action here and there. In a way he makes you work for all the alien destruction, with tons of exposition. But in the end, you realize that it's worth it. It's a good read. A fun read. 

The War of the Worlds is only science fiction in retrospect. Because science fiction has had such an immense influence on pop culture this book will never be forgotten. Although like I said, the prose doesn't age well. Kids today would not enjoy this novel. Again, this is just my thinking but from what I know about high schoolers today, they would hate this novel. Much in the same way that they would hate Frankenstein. Too many classical words and phrases, that would bewilder them and leave them disliking the book. 

The book touches on a couple of themes that have become commonplace. Invasion, space travel, total war, weapons, natural selection, human evolution, colonialism and imperialism, social Darwinism, and religion and science. Did you get all that? All that basically just means that although this is a thin book with only 194 pages, it is quite a heavy book thematically. 

Lastly, the influence upon other books, movies, TV shows, and music are immense. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote A Princess of Mars in 1912, not too long after Wells wrote this. It is because of this book that we use the term 'martian' to describe something unknown or otherworldly. This is a great 'scientific romance' [a term used for science fiction back in Wells' and Jules Verne's' day] novel that will continue to influence. As a science fiction reader, I'm obligated to read it. It was an enjoyable experience.

Recommended if you enjoy classical literature and science fiction.