The War of the Worlds
H.G. Wells (1898)
“The British Empire discovers what it feels like to be colonized — by a civilization from Mars.”
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The War of the Worlds
H.G. Wells (1898) · 192pages · Victorian / Early Sci-Fi · 2 AP appearances
Summary
An unnamed narrator in late-Victorian Surrey witnesses the arrival of Martian cylinders that disgorge towering tripod machines armed with heat-rays and poisonous black smoke. As the military is overwhelmed and London evacuated, the narrator survives by hiding, witnessing humanity reduced to prey. The Martians are ultimately defeated not by human resistance but by terrestrial bacteria, to which they have no immunity — a resolution that underscores both nature's indifference and humanity's fragile place in the cosmic order.
Why It Matters
The War of the Worlds invented the alien invasion genre and established the template that every subsequent invasion narrative follows. More importantly, it was the first major work of fiction to use science fiction as a vehicle for anti-colonial critique, asking readers to imagine themselves in t...
Themes & Motifs
Diction & Style
Register: Formal Victorian prose with a scientific precision inherited from Wells's training under T.H. Huxley — detached, analytical, deliberately understated
Narrator: Retrospective first person — the narrator writes after the events, with the calm of distance but the vividness of tra...
Figurative Language: Moderate
Historical Context
Late Victorian Britain — the British Empire at its greatest extent: Wells wrote at the moment of maximum imperial confidence and maximum imperial anxiety. Britain ruled a quarter of the world's surface, but the Boer War was about to demonstrate that colonial subjec...
Key Characters
Talking Points
- Wells explicitly compares the Martian invasion to the European destruction of indigenous Tasmanians. Why does he make this comparison in the opening chapter, before the invasion begins?
- Why does Wells choose an unnamed narrator rather than a named protagonist? How does anonymity affect the novel's themes?
- The Martians are defeated by bacteria, not by human action. Is this a satisfying resolution? Is it a deus ex machina or something more complex?
- Compare the artilleryman's underground civilization plan to actual responses to existential threats (nuclear bunkers, pandemic prepping, Mars colonization plans). What does Wells suggest about how humans respond to catastrophe?
- The curate's faith collapses under the invasion. Does the novel suggest any alternative source of meaning or hope?
Notable Quotes
“Intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”
“And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought... upon its inferior races.”
“Never before in the history of warfare had destruction been so indiscriminate and so universal.”
Why Read This
Because this 1898 novel predicted poison gas, aerial warfare, directed-energy weapons, and mass refugee crises — and because its central question (what happens when the colonizer becomes the colonized?) remains the most important question in globa...