A story so well-known but how many of us have read the original HG Wells novel The War of the Worlds? I hadn’t, until now. Tempted in a bookshop to pick up the Penguin paperback, I’m glad I turned away from the 2005 Tom Cruise film, the 2019 BBC series, the 1938 Orson Welles radio drama that cause such a panic, and Jeff Wayne’s musical drama featuring the voice of Richard Burton. Set at the end of the 19^th century, this is the story of one man’s experience when an alien capsule lands on Horsell Common near Woking in Surrey. The story builds slowly, as information on the ground spreads slowly. No television, no radio, no internet to disseminate the news of invasion and imminent danger from the strange creatures which emerge from metal cylinders sent to earth. While people die and towns burn in Surrey, a few miles north unknowing Londoners party, eat out, go to work, to the theatre, make love. The narrator, an un-named Londoner, whose wife is considered to be safe in Leatherhead, is driven solely by his need to be reunited with her. He witnesses things he can never have imagined, technology beyond the knowledge of man, but longs to find his wife. But events push him in other directions and into the company of strangers; a timid curate who hides his fear in drink and food, a fantasist artilleryman who imagines a post-apocalyptic world. He sees the bravery, and destruction of, small groups of British military. In central London, the narrator’s brother knows nothing of the Martian tripod fighting machines to the south until, reading of the threat in newssheets, he flees the city. Rescuing two ladies in a pony-chaise who are under attack from ruffians, the trio head east towards the coast and evacuation.
The juxtaposition of everyday small details with the monumental aggressive force that has arrived on earth points to man’s inability to look beyond small, personal concerns to the bigger picture. A tendency that Wells would recognise today. Chapter One, The Eve of the War, is through-provoking for this reason. The arrogance of man to assume we know everything about our planet and the wider universe, that we are supreme, that what we do and think is correct.
What an imagination Wells had. This is an amazing depiction of alien invasion. A classic. Read it, if you haven’t already.
The cover shown above is the edition I read, the 2018 Penguin edition, but there are many editions available.
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If you like this, try:-
‘The Ship’ by Antonia Honeywell
‘The Last of Us’ by Rob Ewing
‘The Choice’ by Claire Wade

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#BookReview THE WAR OF THE WORLDS by HG Wells https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-6Vj via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-