Mac Adam Alfred - The War of the Worlds - Original Version

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The War of the Worlds 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 mans 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. (page 9)

The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one. (page 14)

Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earthabove all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyeswere at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. (page 27)

Theyre coming! (page 36)

One or two adventurous souls, it was afterwards found, went into the darkness and crawled quite near the Martians; but they never returned, for now and again a light-ray, like the beam of a warships searchlight, swept the common, and the Heat-Ray was ready to follow. (page 42)

They wiped us outsimply wiped us out. (page 61)

Humanity gathered for the battle. (page 78)

Canisters smashed on striking the groundthey did not explodeand incontinently disengaged an enormous volume of heavy, inky vapour, coiling and pouring upward in a huge and ebony cumulus cloud, a gaseous hill that sank and spread itself slowly over the surrounding country. And the touch of that vapour, the inhaling of its pungent wisps, was death to all that breathes. (page 100)

If one could have hung that June morning in a balloon in the blazing blue above London every northward and eastward road running out of the tangled maze of streets would have seemed stippled black with the streaming fugitives, each dot a human agony of terror and physical distress. (page 118)

All the complex apparatus of digestion, which makes up the bulk of our bodies, did not exist in the Martians. They were headsmerely heads. Entrails they had none. They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures, and injected it into their own veins. (page 142)

The Martians interchanged thoughts without any physical intermediation. (page 146)

It never was a war, any more than theres war between man and ants. (page 172)

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The War of the Worlds was first published in 1898.

Originally published in mass market format in 2004 by Barnes & Noble Classics
with new Introduction, Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By,
Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.
This trade paperback edition published in 2008.

Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading

Copyright. 2004 by Alfred Mac Adam.

Note on H. G. Wells, The World of H. G. Wells and The War of the Worlds,
Inspired by The War of the Worlds, and Comments & Questions
Copyright 2004 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

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The War of the Worlds

ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-362-5 ISBN-10: 1-59308-362-9

eISBN : 978-1-411-43346-5

LC Control Number 2007941534

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H. G. Wells

Social philosopher, utopian, novelist, and father of science fiction and science fantasy, Herbert George Wells was born on September 21, 1866, in Bromley, Kent. His father was a poor businessman, and young Berties mother had to work as a ladys maid. Living below stairs with his mother at an estate called Uppark, Bertie would sneak into the grand library to read Plato, Swift, and Voltaire, authors who deeply influenced his later works. He showed literary and artistic talent in his early stories and paintings, but the family had limited means, and when he was fourteen years old, Bertie was sent as an apprentice to a dealer in cloth and dry goods, work he disliked.

He held jobs in other trades before winning a scholarship to study biology at the Normal School of Science in London. The eminent biologist T. H. Huxley, a friend and proponent of Darwin, was his teacher; about him Wells later said, I believed then he was the greatest man I was ever likely to meet. Under Huxleys influence, Wells learned the science that would inspire many of his creative works and cultivated the skepticism about the likelihood of human progress that would infuse his writing.

Teaching, textbook writing, and journalism occupied Wells until 1895, when he made his literary debut with the now-legendary novel The Time Machine, which was followed before the end of the century by The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds, books that established him as a major writer. Fiercely critical of Victorian mores, he published voluminously, in fiction and nonfiction, on the subjects of politics and social philosophy. Biological evolution does not ensure moral progress, as Wells would repeat throughout his life, during which he witnessed two world wars and the debasement of science for military and political ends.

In addition to social commentary presented in the guise of science fiction, Wells authored comic novels like Love and Mr. Lewisham, Kipps, and The History of Mister Polly that are Dickensian in their scope and feeling, and a feminist novel, Ann Veronica. He wrote specific social commentary in The New Machiavelli, an attack on the socialist Fabian Society, which he had joined and then rejected, and literary parody (of Henry James) in Boon. He wrote textbooks of biology, and his massive The Outline of History was a major international best-seller.

By the time Wells reached middle age, he was admired around the world, and he used his fame to promote his utopian vision, warning that the future promised Knowledge or extinction. He met with such preeminent political figures as Lenin, Roosevelt, and Stalin and continued to publish, travel, and educate during his final years. Herbert George Wells died in London on August 13, 1946.

The World of H. G. Wells andThe
War of the Worlds