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...."
After wreaking havoc with the village, the people and the countryside, the martian monsters were turned back by the guns and rockets of the military coming from London. The martian rockets arriving "every twenty-four hours brought them reinforcement," bringing more martians, about five per cylinder (Wells 102). The British military were trying to destroy them as they landed with high-powered explosives, while six million people fled from London on horseback and in carts and...
The martians chased the people into the sea, where only one was destroyed by the British navy. The onslaught of martians made a shambles of the great city of London and the author wandered around in it about fourteen days, describing it as having been ruined by the war and the people having been eaten (or rather their blood sucked out of them) by the martians. Eventually the onslaught ceased and a deadly silence came upon the city. The author found dozens of martians dead, killed by the bacteria they had encountered on earth against which their bodies had no defense. The martians had been defeated by lowly earth organisms where no man-made weapon could prevail.
On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles created a "War of the Worlds" radio program which was broadcast in the United States and was believed to be actually happening by thousands of listeners (Paramount 1). Loosely based on the book, Orson Welles' radio broadcast is more widely known in the United States. But the original book of the War of the Worlds is great science fiction.
Works Cited
Encyclopedia of World Biography. "Herbert George Wells," 2005-6. Thomson Gale.
Paramount. War of the Worlds Website. 2008. http://www.war-of-the-worlds.org/Radio/.
Wells, H.G. War of the Worlds. London: Tor Classic Mass Market Paperback. 1898.
