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The War of the Worlds (1898) is a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells. It describes the experiences of an unnamed narrator who travels through the suburbs of London as the Earth is invaded by Martians. It is the earliest story that details a conflict between mankind and an alien race.
The War of the Worlds is split into two parts, Book one: The Coming of the Martians, and Book two: The Earth under the Martians. The novel is narrated by a writer of philosophical articles who throughout the narrative struggles to reunite with his wife, while witnessing the Martians rampaging through the southern English counties. Part one also features the tale of his brother, who accompanies two women to the coast in the hope of escaping England as it is invaded.
The plot has been related to invasion literature of the time. The novel has been variously interpreted as a commentary on evolutionary theory, British imperialism, and generally Victorian fears and prejudices. At the time of publication it was classified as a scientific romance, like his earlier novel The Time Machine. Since then, it has influenced much literature and other media, spawning several films, radio dramas, comic book adaptations, a television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. It also influenced the real-life work of scientists, notably the rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard who developed practical techniques for interplanetary travel.
Plot
"Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us."
The narrator (who is never named) is at an observatory in Ottershaw when explosions are seen on Mars, causing interest among the scientific community. Later a "meteor" lands on Horsell Common, southwest of London, near the narrator's home in Woking, Surrey. He is among the first to discover that the object is a space-going artificial cylinder. When the cylinder opens, the Martians (bulky, octopus-like creatures the size of a bear) briefly emerge, show difficulty in coping with the Earth's atmosphere, and rapidly retreat into the cylinder, although a man who falls into the pit is apparently pulled in. A human deputation (which includes the astronomer Ogilvy) moves towards the cylinder with a white flag, but the Martians incinerate them with a heat-ray weapon, before beginning to assemble alien machinery.
fter the attack, the narrator takes his wife to Leatherhead to stay with relatives until the threat is eliminated. Upon returning home, he discovers the Martians have assembled towering three-legged "fighting-machines" armed with a heat-ray and a chemical weapon: "the black smoke". These Tripods easily defeat army units positioned around the crater and proceed to attack surrounding communities. Fleeing the scene, the narrator meets a retreating artilleryman, who tells him that another cylinder has landed between Woking and Leatherhead, cutting the narrator off from his wife. The two men try to escape together, but are separated at the Shepperton to Weybridge Ferry during a Martian attack on Shepperton. One of the Martian fighting machines is brought down in the River Thames by British artillery, causing its hot heat-ray equipment to almost boil the water as the narrator and countless others try to cross the river into Middlesex.
ore cylinders land across southern England, and a panicked flight out of London begins, including the narrator's brother who flees to the Essex coast after Black smoke is used to devastate London. The torpedo ram HMS Thunder Child destroys two tripods before being sunk by the Martians, though this allows the ship carrying the narrator's brother and his two female travelling companions to escape to continental Europe. Shortly after, all organized resistance has ceased, and the Tripods roam the shattered landscape unhindered. Red weed, a fast growing Martian form of vegetation, spreads over the landscape, aggressively overcoming the Earth's ecology, in much the same way as the Martians have overcome human civilization.
he narrator takes refuge in a ruined building in Sheen shortly before a Martian cylinder lands nearby, trapping him with a mentally unstable curate he had originally met near Shepperton. The curate has been traumatized by the invasion and believes the Martians to be satanic creatures heralding the advent of Armageddon. For several days, the narrator desperately tries to calm the clergyman, and avoid attracting attention, while witnessing the Martians' daily routine, which includes feeding on humans by direct blood transfusion and using a handling machine. The curate's evangelical outbursts finally lead the Martians to their hiding place despite the narrator resorting to violence in order to silence him. While the narrator escapes detection by hiding in the coal-celler, the clergyman's unconscious body is dragged away.
The Martians eventually depart, and the Narrator heads towards Central London. En route he once again encounters the artilleryman who entertains grandiose plans to rebuild civilization underground and finally overthrow the Martians, but the artilleryman's quixotic nature is shown by the slow progress of an unimpressive trench he has been digging. The narrator heads into a deserted London and finally decides to give up his life by rushing towards the Martians, only to discover they, along with the Red Weed, have succumbed to terrestrial pathogenic bacteria, to which they have no immunity. He finds a dying martian calling 'Ulla-ulla-ulla' at the peak of Primrose Hill, near Regent's Park in North London, and realizes the invading force is no longer a threat. At the conclusion, society begins to return to normal and the narrator returns to his home to find himself unexpectedly reunited with his wife, who had thought him dead and vice versa. They, along with the rest of humanity, are faced with a new and expanded universe as a result of the invasion.

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