The War of the Worlds

By: H. G. Wells

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

First published by H. G. Wells in 1898, The War of the Worlds is the granddaddy of all alien invasion stories. The novel begins ominously, as the lone voice of a narrator intones, "No one would have believed in the last years of the 19th century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's."

Things then progress from a series of seemingly mundane reports about odd atmospheric disturbances taking place on Mars to the arrival of Martians just outside of London. At first, the Martians seem laughable, hardly able to move in Earth's comparatively heavy gravity, even enough to raise themselves out of the pit created when their spaceship landed. But soon the Martians reveal their true nature as death machines 100 feet tall rise up from the pit and begin laying waste to the surrounding land. Wells quickly moves the story from the countryside to the evacuation of London itself and the loss of all hope as England's military suffers defeat after defeat.

With horror, the narrator describes how the Martians suck the blood from living humans for sustenance and how it's clear that man is not being conquered so much as corralled.

Public Domain (P)2009 Tantor

Wow still a GREAT story 100+ years later

The SciFi bits of it don't seem at all dated, it's a story about the humans dealing with it all & I loved what the author chose to examine about the humans.

I chose a classic for my first audible book.

I've read this several times. As you can guess, it's a favorite! I did a marathon weekend listen while knitting.

love

i like original story lines.as i have heard much of this particular story .thank you

The phrase "ahead of its time" doesn't do justice

It's crazy to think that this was written in the 19th century, but it most certainly was. The author mentions canal towpaths, which few modern readers will understand. Yet Wells writes the most realistic depiction of a directed energy weapon in all of science fiction. This juxtaposition is something that must be experienced to be believed

A Classic but a little boring.

I was really hoping for a very exciting alien/sci-fi story. it's a classic, so I'm glad I listened to it, but it was very dry, which I'm sure is because of the time period it was written in.

awesome!!

I watch the 1953 movie version and read island of Dr Moreau. and was interested in war of the worlds. and I fell in love with it so I bought a book version.

Curate Cabin Fever, or Watch out for that Tripod!

What an imaginative, objective, gripping, bracing, and humbling novel H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds is! The story is well-known: Martians land on earth, in Woking in Southern England, and quickly set about destroying the British infrastructure and military defenses and crisping via heat ray the humans they don't capture to use as handy blood sources, all as detachedly and efficiently as humans would deal with a colony of ants or wasps. The first person narrator relates all this in a compellingly honest and passionate way. His relationship with the curate is more provocative and terrible than that between Tom Cruise and Tim Robbins in the 2005 movie version by Spielberg. For that matter, the novel, depicting the narrator's attempts to survive and to find his wife, is sparer and cleaner than the film, clotted by Spielberg's corny additions of a little daughter and teenage son into his divorced protagonist's life. Wells' imaginings of the Martian tripod war machines with their terrible heat-ray and poison gas weapons and of their spider-like handling-machines (with their uncanny animation and dexterity) and of the red creeping Martian weeds and of how panicked masses of people would behave are all vivid and morbidly fascinating. Via his Martians, Wells forces us to look again at our actions towards the "inferior" species and aboriginal peoples on our own world and also at our "right" to survive in an uncaring universe.

Simon Vance does his usual fine job of reading, everything being just right except perhaps that his female voices may verge on the artificially feminine. But all in all this is a great audiobook.

So much for the modern SF reader to enjoy

Originally posted with links at Fantasy Literature.

“It was the beginning of the rout of civilization, of the massacre of mankind.”

H.G. Wells’ earliest novels had a major impact on science fiction. The War of the Worlds, first serialized in Pearson’s Magazine in 1897 and published in novel form in 1898, is one of our earliest examples of the First Contact theme. In Wells’ story several spaceships from Mars land in England, creating vast craters. At first the English are either amused or indifferent until Martians pop out and start terrorizing them with heat rays, “fighting machines,” “black smoke” and a Martian plant that begins spreading across England. The English are not prepared to fight this kind of war and, because it’s the late nineteenth century, are unable to communicate their situation quickly enough to the outside world. By the time the Martians make their way to London, it looks like the entire human race is doomed.

The story is related in the first person by an unnamed narrator, a writer who lives in Surrey and observes the landing of one of the Martian ships, the building of their fighting machines, and the mass slaughter of his countrymen. He has a wife who he sends to a relative’s house, though it isn’t long before he realizes that she’s probably not safe there either. We also hear from our narrator’s brother and another character who let us know what’s going on in other parts of England where the Martians have landed. At one point our narrator and another man are trapped together in a partly destroyed house at the edge of one of the craters. For two weeks they must try to get along with each other, sharing very little food and water. During this time they are able to observe the Martians’ activity, which is horrifying, but they must stay hidden and silent so the Martians don’t notice them. This is not a favorable situation for maintaining one’s sanity.

The plot of The War of the Worlds is exciting but the best part of the novel is its imagery and language. The tall fighting machines which walk on long jointed legs and have tentacles that grab people are horrifying, as is the image of the craters and the intrusive red weed that grows wild and threatens to overrun our planet. Even the domestic scene at the beginning of the story is eerie and foreboding:

… I remember that dinner table with extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife’s sweet anxious face peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white cloth with its silver and glass table furniture — for in those days even philosophical writers had many little luxuries — the crimson-purple wine in my glass, are photographically distinct. At the end of it I sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy’s rashness, and denouncing the shortsighted timidity of the Martians.

So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. “We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear.” I did not know it, but that was the last civilized dinner I was to eat for very many strange and terrible days.

Or this one in which he vividly contrasts the glory and the humility of man:

Since the night of my return from Leatherhead I had not prayed. I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers, had prayed as heathens mutter charms when I was in extremity; but now I prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face with the darkness of God. Strange night! Strangest in this, that so soon as dawn had come, I, who had talked with God, crept out of the house like a rat leaving its hiding place — a creature scarcely larger, an inferior animal, a thing that for any passing whim of our masters might be hunted and killed. Perhaps they also prayed confidently to God. Surely, if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity — pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion.

H.G. Wells’ interest in Darwin’s ideas about natural selection are obvious and he seemed particularly interested in the evolution of intelligence (this was also a major theme in his novel The Time Machine).

Wells also doesn’t miss opportunities to mock the personalities and social customs of some of his fellow Englishmen. There is some of this when he’s trapped with the man in the house, but my favorite example is when he meets a man who has grandiose plans for kicking the Martians off Earth and recruits our narrator to join up. This part is just funny.

There’s so much for the modern science fiction reader to enjoy in The War of the Worlds. It’s a classic which has never been out of print and its story has inspired not only sequels and pastiches but also movies, dramatizations, music, and comics. If you’re only familiar with it from one of those secondary sources, I highly recommend reading Wells’ original. It’s in the public domain so it’s easily found for free, but I recommend the audio version narrated by Simon Vance who is one of the top narrators in the business. You can get this superb version for only 99¢ if you use the Wispersync deal from Amazon and Audible. (Purchase the Kindle version for free and then purchase the audio version (by Simon Vance!) for 99¢.)

Still Awesomely Horrific

H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds is apparently one of those literary classics of Science Fiction that only seems to have gotten better with age. It's still bizarre and terrifying to listen to, and this is due in no small part to Simon Vance's incredible narration.

I'd read the book years back, and have seen both cinematic adaptations. I wasn't sure how it would hold-up, but I was completely hooked from the opening minutes. I'm impressed by how full of weird this book is - the Martians and their tripods are some of the most original aliens we are ever likely to read. And some of the scenes and characters - the curate in particular - seem more relevant and upsetting than they did to me when I initially read it.

Vance is an excellent reader in general, and his performance here brings a lot of emotion to this apocalyptic vision. His voice and tone are sobering, a man witnessing the destruction of his civilization, trying to come to grips with it and figure out what (if anything) he is to do next. Vance is really the ideal reader for this one, and he turns in great work here.

All in all, this is an excellent storytelling experience. Highly recommended if you want a dose of classic Science Fiction.

It was good to hear the original story.

Although I have seen the movies, old and new, I had never read the original book as it was written. Now, with a 'new' version coming out, soon to the BBC, ultimately available in the US also, from the scenes it looks to be a version based on this original book version taking place in the late 1800s and not updated for the 21st century. So I listened to this story and it was really good! I hope the new video version will live up to the original story but with the fantastic visual effects that can bring it to life in a way an original reader could only have dreamed of in their own imagination.