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The War of the Worlds

Author H. G. Wells
Introduction by Brian Aldiss
Edited by Patrick Parrinder
Notes by Andy Sawyer
Paperback
$11.00 US
Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Classics
5.1"W x 7.8"H x 0.6"D  
On sale May 04, 2005 | 240 Pages | 978-0-14-144103-0
| Grades 9-12 + AP/IB
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  • English Language Arts > Genre: Fiction > Science & Speculative Fiction > Alien Contact
  • English Language Arts > Genre: Fiction > Science & Speculative Fiction > Dystopian
  • English Language Arts > Literature: British & Commonwealth > 20th Century
  • About
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The first modern tale of alien invasion, H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds remains one of the most influential science fiction novels ever published.

The night after a shooting star is seen streaking through the sky from Mars, a cylinder is discovered on Horsell Common in London. At first, naïve locals approach the cylinder armed just with a white flag - only to be quickly killed by an all-destroying heat-ray, as terrifying tentacled invaders emerge. Soon the whole of human civilisation is under threat, as powerful Martians build gigantic killing machines, destroy all in their path with black gas and burning rays, and feast on the warm blood of trapped, still-living human prey. The forces of the Earth, however, may prove harder to beat than they at first appear. The War of the Worlds has been the subject of countless adaptations, including an Orson Welles radio drama which caused mass panic when it was broadcast, with listeners confusing it for a news broadcast heralding alien invasion; a musical version by Jeff Wayne; and, most recently, Steven Spielberg's 2005 film version, starring Tom Cruise.

This Penguin Classics edition includes a full biographical essay on Wells, a further reading list and detailed notes. The introduction, by Brian Aldiss, considers the novel's view of religion and society. 

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
H.G. Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, in 1866. After an education repeatedly interrupted by his family’s financial problems, he eventually found work as a teacher at a succession of schools, where he began to write his first stories.
Wells became a prolific writer with a diverse output, of which the famous works are his science fiction novels. These are some of the earliest and most influential examples of the genre, and include classics such as The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. Most of his books very well-received, and had a huge influence on many younger writers, including George Orwell and Isaac Asimov. Wells also wrote many popular non-fiction books, and used his writing to support the wide range of political and social causes in which he had an interest, although these became increasingly eccentric towards the end of his life.
Twice-married, Wells had many affairs, including a ten-year liaison with Rebecca West that produced a son. He died in London in 1946. View titles by H. G. Wells
Book One:
The Coming of the Martians

Chapter 1
The Eve of the War 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; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. 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. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence.

Yet so vain is man and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer up to the very end of the nineteenth century expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that Mars is not only more distant from life’s beginning but also nearer its end.

The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbor. Its physical condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with instruments, and with intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope—our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and gray with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through drifting cloud-wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow navy-crowded seas.

And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is indeed their only escape from the destruction that generation after generation creeps upon them.

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety—their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of ours—and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh perfect unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planet—it is odd, by the way, that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war—but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready.

During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the illuminated part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory, then by Perrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard of it first in the issue of Nature dated August 2nd. I am inclined to think that this blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun, in the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us. Peculiar markings as yet unexplained were seen near the site of that outbreak during the next two oppositions.

The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars approached opposition Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred toward midnight of the 12th; and the spectroscope to which he had at once resorted indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity toward this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, “as flaming gases rushed out of a gun.”

A singularly appropriate phrase it proved. Yet the next day there was nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the Daily Telegraph, and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest dangers that ever threatened the human race. I might not have heard of the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer, at Ottershaw. He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess of his feelings invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a scrutiny of the red planet.

In spite of all that has happened since I still remember that vigil very distinctly: the black and silent observatory, the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in the roof—an oblong profundity with the star dust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about, invisible but audible. Looking through the telescope one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet swimming in the field. It seemed such a little thing, so bright and small and still, faintly marked with transverse stripes and slightly flattened from the perfect round. But so little it was, so silvery warm—a pin’s head of light! It was as if it quivered, but really this was the telescope vibrating with the activity of the clockwork that kept the planet in view.

As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye was tired. Forty millions of miles it was from us—more than forty million miles of void. Few people realize the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.

Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of light, three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was the unfathomable darkness of empty space. You know how that blackness looks on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far profounder. And invisible to me because it was so remote and small, flying swiftly and steadily toward me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles, came the Thing they were sending us, the Thing that was to bring so much struggle and calamity and death to the earth. I never dreamed of it then as I watched; no one on earth dreamed of that unerring missile.

That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I saw it. A reddish flash at the edge, the slightest projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and at that I told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm and I was thirsty, and I went, stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way in the darkness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while Ogilvy exclaimed at the streamer of gas that came out toward us.

That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from Mars just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the first one. I remember how I sat on the table there in the blackness with patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes. I wished I had a light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy watched till one, and then gave it up, and we lit the lantern and walked over to his house. Down below in the darkness were Ottershaw and Chertsey and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace.

He was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars, and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were signaling us. His idea was that meteorites might be falling in a heavy shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets.

“The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one,” he said.

Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing caused the Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust, visible through a powerful telescope on earth as little gray fluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet’s atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features.

Even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and popular notes appeared here, there and everywhere concerning the volcanoes upon Mars. The seriocomic periodical Punch, I remember, made a happy use of it in the political cartoon. And all unsuspected, those missiles the Martians had fired at us drew earthward, rushing now at a pace of many miles a second through the empty gulf of space, hour by hour and day by day, nearer and nearer. It seems to me now almost incredibly wonderful that, with that swift fate hanging over us, men could go about their petty concerns as they did. I remember how jubilant Markham was at securing a new photograph of the planet for the illustrated paper he edited in those days. People in these latter times scarcely realize the abundance and enterprise of our nineteenth-century papers. For my own part, I was much occupied in learning to ride a bicycle, and busy upon a series of papers discussing the probable developments of moral ideas as civilization progressed.

One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been 10,000,000 miles away) I went for a walk with my wife. It was starlight, and I explained the signs of the zodiac to her and pointed out Mars, a bright dot of light creeping zenithward, toward which so many telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night. Coming home, a party of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing and playing music. There were lights in the upper windows of the houses as the people went to bed. From the railway station in the distance came the sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened almost into melody by the distance. My wife pointed out to me the brightness of the red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging in a framework against the sky. It seemed so safe and tranquil.
Copyright © 2002 by H. G. Wells Introduction by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
“The creations of Mr. Wells . . . belong unreservedly to an age and degree of scientific knowledge far removed from the present, though I will not say entirely beyond the limits of the possible.” —Jules Verne

About

The first modern tale of alien invasion, H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds remains one of the most influential science fiction novels ever published.

The night after a shooting star is seen streaking through the sky from Mars, a cylinder is discovered on Horsell Common in London. At first, naïve locals approach the cylinder armed just with a white flag - only to be quickly killed by an all-destroying heat-ray, as terrifying tentacled invaders emerge. Soon the whole of human civilisation is under threat, as powerful Martians build gigantic killing machines, destroy all in their path with black gas and burning rays, and feast on the warm blood of trapped, still-living human prey. The forces of the Earth, however, may prove harder to beat than they at first appear. The War of the Worlds has been the subject of countless adaptations, including an Orson Welles radio drama which caused mass panic when it was broadcast, with listeners confusing it for a news broadcast heralding alien invasion; a musical version by Jeff Wayne; and, most recently, Steven Spielberg's 2005 film version, starring Tom Cruise.

This Penguin Classics edition includes a full biographical essay on Wells, a further reading list and detailed notes. The introduction, by Brian Aldiss, considers the novel's view of religion and society. 

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Author

H.G. Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, in 1866. After an education repeatedly interrupted by his family’s financial problems, he eventually found work as a teacher at a succession of schools, where he began to write his first stories.
Wells became a prolific writer with a diverse output, of which the famous works are his science fiction novels. These are some of the earliest and most influential examples of the genre, and include classics such as The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. Most of his books very well-received, and had a huge influence on many younger writers, including George Orwell and Isaac Asimov. Wells also wrote many popular non-fiction books, and used his writing to support the wide range of political and social causes in which he had an interest, although these became increasingly eccentric towards the end of his life.
Twice-married, Wells had many affairs, including a ten-year liaison with Rebecca West that produced a son. He died in London in 1946. View titles by H. G. Wells

Excerpt

Book One:
The Coming of the Martians

Chapter 1
The Eve of the War 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; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. 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. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence.

Yet so vain is man and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer up to the very end of the nineteenth century expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that Mars is not only more distant from life’s beginning but also nearer its end.

The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbor. Its physical condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with instruments, and with intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope—our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and gray with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through drifting cloud-wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow navy-crowded seas.

And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is indeed their only escape from the destruction that generation after generation creeps upon them.

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety—their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of ours—and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh perfect unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planet—it is odd, by the way, that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war—but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready.

During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the illuminated part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory, then by Perrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard of it first in the issue of Nature dated August 2nd. I am inclined to think that this blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun, in the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us. Peculiar markings as yet unexplained were seen near the site of that outbreak during the next two oppositions.

The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars approached opposition Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred toward midnight of the 12th; and the spectroscope to which he had at once resorted indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity toward this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, “as flaming gases rushed out of a gun.”

A singularly appropriate phrase it proved. Yet the next day there was nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the Daily Telegraph, and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest dangers that ever threatened the human race. I might not have heard of the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer, at Ottershaw. He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess of his feelings invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a scrutiny of the red planet.

In spite of all that has happened since I still remember that vigil very distinctly: the black and silent observatory, the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in the roof—an oblong profundity with the star dust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about, invisible but audible. Looking through the telescope one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet swimming in the field. It seemed such a little thing, so bright and small and still, faintly marked with transverse stripes and slightly flattened from the perfect round. But so little it was, so silvery warm—a pin’s head of light! It was as if it quivered, but really this was the telescope vibrating with the activity of the clockwork that kept the planet in view.

As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye was tired. Forty millions of miles it was from us—more than forty million miles of void. Few people realize the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.

Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of light, three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was the unfathomable darkness of empty space. You know how that blackness looks on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far profounder. And invisible to me because it was so remote and small, flying swiftly and steadily toward me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles, came the Thing they were sending us, the Thing that was to bring so much struggle and calamity and death to the earth. I never dreamed of it then as I watched; no one on earth dreamed of that unerring missile.

That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I saw it. A reddish flash at the edge, the slightest projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and at that I told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm and I was thirsty, and I went, stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way in the darkness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while Ogilvy exclaimed at the streamer of gas that came out toward us.

That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from Mars just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the first one. I remember how I sat on the table there in the blackness with patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes. I wished I had a light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy watched till one, and then gave it up, and we lit the lantern and walked over to his house. Down below in the darkness were Ottershaw and Chertsey and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace.

He was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars, and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were signaling us. His idea was that meteorites might be falling in a heavy shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets.

“The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one,” he said.

Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing caused the Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust, visible through a powerful telescope on earth as little gray fluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet’s atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features.

Even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and popular notes appeared here, there and everywhere concerning the volcanoes upon Mars. The seriocomic periodical Punch, I remember, made a happy use of it in the political cartoon. And all unsuspected, those missiles the Martians had fired at us drew earthward, rushing now at a pace of many miles a second through the empty gulf of space, hour by hour and day by day, nearer and nearer. It seems to me now almost incredibly wonderful that, with that swift fate hanging over us, men could go about their petty concerns as they did. I remember how jubilant Markham was at securing a new photograph of the planet for the illustrated paper he edited in those days. People in these latter times scarcely realize the abundance and enterprise of our nineteenth-century papers. For my own part, I was much occupied in learning to ride a bicycle, and busy upon a series of papers discussing the probable developments of moral ideas as civilization progressed.

One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been 10,000,000 miles away) I went for a walk with my wife. It was starlight, and I explained the signs of the zodiac to her and pointed out Mars, a bright dot of light creeping zenithward, toward which so many telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night. Coming home, a party of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing and playing music. There were lights in the upper windows of the houses as the people went to bed. From the railway station in the distance came the sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened almost into melody by the distance. My wife pointed out to me the brightness of the red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging in a framework against the sky. It seemed so safe and tranquil.
Copyright © 2002 by H. G. Wells Introduction by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Praise

“The creations of Mr. Wells . . . belong unreservedly to an age and degree of scientific knowledge far removed from the present, though I will not say entirely beyond the limits of the possible.” —Jules Verne

Additional formats

  • The War of the Worlds
    The War of the Worlds
    H. G. Wells, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $20.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 17, 2019
  • The War of the Worlds
    The War of the Worlds
    H. G. Wells, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $20.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 17, 2019

Other books in this series

  • The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories
    The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories
    From Hans Christian Andersen to Angela Carter
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 10, 2020
  • Tales from 1,001 Nights
    Tales from 1,001 Nights
    Aladdin, Ali Baba and Other Favourites
    Anonymous, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Dec 10, 2019
  • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
    Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
    Jules Verne
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 14, 2018
  • The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories
    The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories
    Henry James
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 13, 2018
  • War and Peace
    War and Peace
    Leo Tolstoy, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 14, 2017
  • The Travels
    The Travels
    Marco Polo
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 02, 2016
  • Metamorphoses
    Metamorphoses
    Ovid, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    May 17, 2016
  • David Copperfield
    David Copperfield
    Charles Dickens, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    May 17, 2016
  • Paradise Lost
    Paradise Lost
    John Milton, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    May 17, 2016
  • Love and Freindship
    Love and Freindship
    And Other Youthful Writings
    Jane Austen
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 16, 2016
  • The Canterbury Tales
    The Canterbury Tales
    Geoffrey Chaucer, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Dec 29, 2015
  • Moby-Dick
    Moby-Dick
    or, The Whale
    Herman Melville, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 24, 2015
  • The Iliad
    The Iliad
    Homer, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 24, 2015
  • The Jungle Books
    The Jungle Books
    Rudyard Kipling, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $23.00 US
    Hardcover
    May 26, 2015
  • Anna Karenina
    Anna Karenina
    Leo Tolstoy, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 30, 2014
  • Frankenstein
    Frankenstein
    Mary Shelley, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 30, 2014
  • Robinson Crusoe
    Robinson Crusoe
    Daniel Defoe, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $23.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 30, 2014
  • Jabberwocky and Other Nonsense
    Jabberwocky and Other Nonsense
    Collected Poems
    Lewis Carroll
    $19.00 US
    Paperback
    Jul 29, 2014
  • Vanity Fair
    Vanity Fair
    William Makepeace Thackeray, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Aug 27, 2013
  • The Count of Monte Cristo
    The Count of Monte Cristo
    Alexandre Dumas, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Aug 27, 2013
  • Persuasion
    Persuasion
    Jane Austen
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 24, 2012
  • Mansfield Park
    Mansfield Park
    (Classics hardcover)
    Jane Austen, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 24, 2012
  • Northanger Abbey
    Northanger Abbey
    Jane Austen, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 24, 2012
  • Sense and Sensibility
    Sense and Sensibility
    (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
    Jane Austen
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Oct 25, 2011
  • Gulliver's Travels
    Gulliver's Travels
    Jonathan Swift, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 26, 2011
  • Middlemarch
    Middlemarch
    George Eliot, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 26, 2011
  • A Tale of Two Cities
    A Tale of Two Cities
    Charles Dickens, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $24.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 26, 2011
  • Great Expectations
    Great Expectations
    (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
    Charles Dickens, Tom Haugomat
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Dec 28, 2010
  • Jane Eyre
    Jane Eyre
    (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
    Charlotte Bronte, Ruben Toledo
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 30, 2010
  • Little Women
    Little Women
    Louisa May Alcott, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 28, 2010
  • Oliver Twist
    Oliver Twist
    Charles Dickens, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 28, 2010
  • The Sonnets and a Lover's Complaint
    The Sonnets and a Lover's Complaint
    William Shakespeare, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $23.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 28, 2010
  • The Divine Comedy
    The Divine Comedy
    Volume 1: Inferno
    Dante Alighieri, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 28, 2010
  • Emma
    Emma
    Jane Austen
    $24.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 10, 2010
  • Lady Chatterley's Lover
    Lady Chatterley's Lover
    D. H. Lawrence, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $20.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 10, 2010
  • Tess of the D'Urbervilles
    Tess of the D'Urbervilles
    Thomas Hardy, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $24.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 27, 2009
  • Pride and Prejudice
    Pride and Prejudice
    Jane Austen, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 27, 2009
  • Wuthering Heights
    Wuthering Heights
    Emily Bronte, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $27.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 27, 2009
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray
    The Picture of Dorian Gray
    Oscar Wilde, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $24.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 27, 2009
  • Around the World in Eighty Days
    Around the World in Eighty Days
    Jules Verne
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    May 04, 2004
  • The Aeneid
    The Aeneid
    Virgil
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 29, 2003
  • Dracula
    Dracula
    Bram Stoker
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 29, 2003
  • The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories
    The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories
    From Hans Christian Andersen to Angela Carter
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 10, 2020
  • Tales from 1,001 Nights
    Tales from 1,001 Nights
    Aladdin, Ali Baba and Other Favourites
    Anonymous, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Dec 10, 2019
  • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
    Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
    Jules Verne
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 14, 2018
  • The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories
    The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories
    Henry James
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 13, 2018
  • War and Peace
    War and Peace
    Leo Tolstoy, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 14, 2017
  • The Travels
    The Travels
    Marco Polo
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 02, 2016
  • Metamorphoses
    Metamorphoses
    Ovid, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    May 17, 2016
  • David Copperfield
    David Copperfield
    Charles Dickens, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    May 17, 2016
  • Paradise Lost
    Paradise Lost
    John Milton, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    May 17, 2016
  • Love and Freindship
    Love and Freindship
    And Other Youthful Writings
    Jane Austen
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 16, 2016
  • The Canterbury Tales
    The Canterbury Tales
    Geoffrey Chaucer, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Dec 29, 2015
  • Moby-Dick
    Moby-Dick
    or, The Whale
    Herman Melville, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 24, 2015
  • The Iliad
    The Iliad
    Homer, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 24, 2015
  • The Jungle Books
    The Jungle Books
    Rudyard Kipling, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $23.00 US
    Hardcover
    May 26, 2015
  • Anna Karenina
    Anna Karenina
    Leo Tolstoy, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 30, 2014
  • Frankenstein
    Frankenstein
    Mary Shelley, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 30, 2014
  • Robinson Crusoe
    Robinson Crusoe
    Daniel Defoe, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $23.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 30, 2014
  • Jabberwocky and Other Nonsense
    Jabberwocky and Other Nonsense
    Collected Poems
    Lewis Carroll
    $19.00 US
    Paperback
    Jul 29, 2014
  • Vanity Fair
    Vanity Fair
    William Makepeace Thackeray, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Aug 27, 2013
  • The Count of Monte Cristo
    The Count of Monte Cristo
    Alexandre Dumas, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Aug 27, 2013
  • Persuasion
    Persuasion
    Jane Austen
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 24, 2012
  • Mansfield Park
    Mansfield Park
    (Classics hardcover)
    Jane Austen, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 24, 2012
  • Northanger Abbey
    Northanger Abbey
    Jane Austen, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 24, 2012
  • Sense and Sensibility
    Sense and Sensibility
    (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
    Jane Austen
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Oct 25, 2011
  • Gulliver's Travels
    Gulliver's Travels
    Jonathan Swift, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 26, 2011
  • Middlemarch
    Middlemarch
    George Eliot, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 26, 2011
  • A Tale of Two Cities
    A Tale of Two Cities
    Charles Dickens, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $24.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 26, 2011
  • Great Expectations
    Great Expectations
    (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
    Charles Dickens, Tom Haugomat
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Dec 28, 2010
  • Jane Eyre
    Jane Eyre
    (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
    Charlotte Bronte, Ruben Toledo
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 30, 2010
  • Little Women
    Little Women
    Louisa May Alcott, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 28, 2010
  • Oliver Twist
    Oliver Twist
    Charles Dickens, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 28, 2010
  • The Sonnets and a Lover's Complaint
    The Sonnets and a Lover's Complaint
    William Shakespeare, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $23.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 28, 2010
  • The Divine Comedy
    The Divine Comedy
    Volume 1: Inferno
    Dante Alighieri, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 28, 2010
  • Emma
    Emma
    Jane Austen
    $24.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 10, 2010
  • Lady Chatterley's Lover
    Lady Chatterley's Lover
    D. H. Lawrence, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $20.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 10, 2010
  • Tess of the D'Urbervilles
    Tess of the D'Urbervilles
    Thomas Hardy, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $24.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 27, 2009
  • Pride and Prejudice
    Pride and Prejudice
    Jane Austen, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 27, 2009
  • Wuthering Heights
    Wuthering Heights
    Emily Bronte, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $27.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 27, 2009
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray
    The Picture of Dorian Gray
    Oscar Wilde, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $24.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 27, 2009
  • Around the World in Eighty Days
    Around the World in Eighty Days
    Jules Verne
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    May 04, 2004
  • The Aeneid
    The Aeneid
    Virgil
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 29, 2003
  • Dracula
    Dracula
    Bram Stoker
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 29, 2003

Other Books by this Author

  • The Invisible Man
    The Invisible Man
    H. G. Wells
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 06, 2018
  • The War of the Worlds
    The War of the Worlds
    H. G. Wells
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 06, 2018
  • The Rights of Man
    The Rights of Man
    H. G. Wells
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Mar 21, 2017
  • The Time Machine
    The Time Machine
    H. G. Wells
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Mar 21, 2017
  • Letters from a Stoic
    Letters from a Stoic
    Seneca, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 28, 2015
  • The Time Machine
    The Time Machine
    H. G. Wells
    $5.95 US
    Mass Market Paperback
    Nov 04, 2014
  • The Invisible Man
    The Invisible Man
    H. G. Wells
    $5.95 US
    Mass Market Paperback
    Oct 05, 2010
  • The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds
    The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds
    Introduction by Margaret Drabble
    H. G. Wells
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Aug 03, 2010
  • The Time Machine / The Invisible Man
    The Time Machine / The Invisible Man
    H. G. Wells
    $6.95 US
    Mass Market Paperback
    Oct 02, 2007
  • The War of the Worlds
    The War of the Worlds
    H. G. Wells
    $5.95 US
    Mass Market Paperback
    Sep 04, 2007
  • The Invisible Man
    The Invisible Man
    H. G. Wells
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 27, 2005
  • The Island of Dr Moreau
    The Island of Dr Moreau
    H. G. Wells
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 28, 2005
  • The Time Machine
    The Time Machine
    H. G. Wells
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    May 31, 2005
  • The Time Machine
    The Time Machine
    An Invention
    H. G. Wells, W.A. Dwiggins
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 12, 2002
  • The Invisible Man
    The Invisible Man
    A Grotesque Romance
    H. G. Wells
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 12, 2002
  • The Invisible Man
    The Invisible Man
    H. G. Wells
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 06, 2018
  • The War of the Worlds
    The War of the Worlds
    H. G. Wells
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 06, 2018
  • The Rights of Man
    The Rights of Man
    H. G. Wells
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Mar 21, 2017
  • The Time Machine
    The Time Machine
    H. G. Wells
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Mar 21, 2017
  • Letters from a Stoic
    Letters from a Stoic
    Seneca, Coralie Bickford-Smith
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 28, 2015
  • The Time Machine
    The Time Machine
    H. G. Wells
    $5.95 US
    Mass Market Paperback
    Nov 04, 2014
  • The Invisible Man
    The Invisible Man
    H. G. Wells
    $5.95 US
    Mass Market Paperback
    Oct 05, 2010
  • The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds
    The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds
    Introduction by Margaret Drabble
    H. G. Wells
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Aug 03, 2010
  • The Time Machine / The Invisible Man
    The Time Machine / The Invisible Man
    H. G. Wells
    $6.95 US
    Mass Market Paperback
    Oct 02, 2007
  • The War of the Worlds
    The War of the Worlds
    H. G. Wells
    $5.95 US
    Mass Market Paperback
    Sep 04, 2007
  • The Invisible Man
    The Invisible Man
    H. G. Wells
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 27, 2005
  • The Island of Dr Moreau
    The Island of Dr Moreau
    H. G. Wells
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 28, 2005
  • The Time Machine
    The Time Machine
    H. G. Wells
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    May 31, 2005
  • The Time Machine
    The Time Machine
    An Invention
    H. G. Wells, W.A. Dwiggins
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 12, 2002
  • The Invisible Man
    The Invisible Man
    A Grotesque Romance
    H. G. Wells
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 12, 2002
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