The War Of The Worlds – H.G. Wells (1898)

The War Of The Worlds was first published in 1898. 1898! No one who was around when this book was published is around now and still it is a book about Martians who land on earth and set about lighting the place (and people) up with their heat-rays and giant metallic machines.  Considering that it was only twenty years before that London had got its first public electric lights, the ability of Wells’ imagination to conjure up the these aliens and their technology is astonishing. At the same time, set against the Industrial Revolution, as well as Darwin’s recently published On The Origin Of The Species, the images of both Martian technological might as well as the physical evolutions of the invaders is a great exercise in thought as to where humans might well end up.

Beyond its gaze into the future, The War Of The Worlds is also great in its depiction of English life at the turn of the century. There are, of course, countless classic novels that give an insight into the society and struggles of the time but none of them do so in such a modern format – that of the alien invasion. For a start, the Martian invasion provides the opportunity to let go of the weight and expectation that usually comes with reading an old classic. Also, with a plot device that is so easily accessible to us in the twenty first century, we are able to take a look at a bygone era with a very modern filter through which the people, attitudes and technologies of the time can be contrasted with those of our own.  

In that sense, especially with respect to alien invasions, it is interesting to note the location of the invasion – England. At the end of the nineteenth century the British Empire, the largest empire in human history, was still in the full swing of a century-long reign as the foremost global power. There hadn’t even been a world war yet. What is it about aliens that they always seem to know exactly who the most powerful nation on earth is at the time - and that this is where they land and attack? And what does it say about the human psyche that even the most powerful need to be able to cast themselves as the underdog from time to time?

(Plot spoiler alert)

Having said that that, there is an intriguing difference between the outcome of The War Of The Worlds and most modern American takes on the alien invasion. In the classic America version, the attackers are generally vanquished by the ingenuity of a lone hero, or heroic force, representing the hopes of the nation (and the world). In Wells’ version the hero is but a helpless bystander as the human race are ultimately saved by bacteria - their smallest and easiest forgotten relatives on the tree of terrestrial life against whom the Martians have no defense.