War of the worlds by H.G. Wells

War of the Worlds is the story of martian landings in London in the late part of the 19th century, written by Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) (Encyclopedia, 2005). He tells the story as if it was in the past, during the war of the Opposition of 1894. "The storm burst upon us six years ago now, as Mars approached opposition" (Wells 7) the next day after the sighting of an explosion on the planet Mars (first from the Lick Observatory), the author "met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer, at Ottershaw," and went with him to the observatory that night to observe by chance another "jetting out of gas from the distant planet" of Mars, "just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the first one" (Wells 9-10).

In the story, many people saw this flame on the surface of Mars and the shooting up toward the earth of some invisible object. They observed this over and over each night ten more nights, "a flame each night" (which would have made 12 spaceships to be shot toward the earth.)

In Chapter Two (the Falling Star), Wells describes the night of the "first falling star." It was flying like a flame over Winchester, eastward, and many mistook it for a falling star which had a greenish tail that glowed for awhile. He describes how the astronomer Ogilvy calculated where it had landed and found it the next morning, an encrusted cylinder still hot from entering the earth's atmosphere, in a pit made from its impact on the heath (Wells 14). Ogilvy watched it as it cooled and saw the circular top of the cylinder unscrewing. Frantic, he ran back into town. It was early in the morning and the villagers thought he was crazy. But he found a journalist, Henderson, and told him what was happening and both men returned to the cylinder on the heath (Wells 18). By evening, the object had cooled and a martian emerged, looking like a leathery bear with tentacles and a drooling mouth. More of them emerged and, though some sightseers fled, some of the crowd remained to watch the "ugly brutes" (Wells 31).

The martians came slowly out of the pit, firing, from mirrors atop their heads what might today be described as a laser ray, at the scientists (including Ogilvy) who were trying to communicate with them and burned the scientists to a crisp while others ran away. If the ray didn't hit a man, it hit and burned up what was beyond the man, even at a distance, such as a tree or a building. The trees around the village of Woking were set ablaze (Wells 40). When the author got home to his village, no one believed him, but within a day the military was proceeding to the spot where the martians had landed in the Southwestern suburbs of London.

The second cylinder fell on Sunday, a day later, on the Byfleet Golf Links. The next night another cylinder fell on the fields near Addlestone. By then the inhabitants for miles around had panicked and fled, and the army moved in, though most of the soldiers were ignorant of what they were fighting. From each cylinder, in one day the martians constructed huge mechanical tripods with robot-like arms which rushed across the countryside. They burned the village of Woking, wrecked the trains, killed people and wiped out the army (Wells 78). A soldier described them as "giants in armour....Hundred feet high. Three legs and a body like 'luminium, with a mighty great head in a hood...."