HG Wells was truly a man far ahead of his time. I can imagine how much people scoffed at his ideas and books during his time. He wrote The War of the Worlds in 1898 England, when colonialism and imperialism were the popular ideologies of the day, and in a place where class-based social stratification was commonplace. I never really realized how forward thinking HG Wells was until I finished this book. Between when I started this book and when I finished it, I did not have a lot of time to read it, so my experience of it is drawn out over a long period of a few months, thereby rendering my opinion of it very difficult to gauge. 'HG Wells' The War of the Worlds starts out rather slow, but gets very interesting in the second half of the book. This classic chiller, when adapted for radio in 1938 by Orson Welles, was realistic enough to cause widespread panic throughout the United States. Using their fiery heat rays and monstrous strength, the heartless aliens threaten the future existence of all life on Earth. Following the landing in England of ten huge and indefatigable creatures, complete chaos erupts. This spellbinding tale describes the Martian invasion of Earth. Wells has since been credited with predicting quite a number of technologies, such as laser-like rays, industrial robot-like machines, and chemical-warfare.'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…' So begins The War of the Worlds, the science fiction classic that first proposed the possibility that intelligent life exists on other planets. The War of the Worlds can be read as an indictment of European colonial actions around the globe at that time - with which the injustice of the Martian invasion can be compared. The novel demonstrates Wells' typical pessimistic outlook on human nature and offers a good deal of criticism on society and people's ignorance and vanity.

Overall, The War of the Worlds has become an early milestone in and inspiration for the invasion genre. The novel has served as a template for many derivative or inspired works, including comics, countless books, a TV series, several films, a bestselling musical, and the famous Orson Wells broadcast. The frightening images of people fleeing from gigantic tripod machines and the prospect of life under Martian rule have served as a bottomless well of inspiration for popular culture. In the story, an English gentleman narrates the events of a violent and fast paced Martian invasion. The book is considered to be one of the first science fiction novels. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds in 1898, when there was much speculation about life on the planet Mars. Download cover art Download CD case insert The War of the Worlds

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