The War Of The Worlds - H.G.Wells, Best-sellers
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The War of the Worlds
H. G. WELLS
Level 5
Retold by David Maule
Series Editors: Andy Hopkins and Jocelyn Potter
Introduction
'Go on! Go on!' the voices said. 'They're coming.'
It seemed that the whole population of London was moving north.
There were people of every class and profession, but they were all dusty;
their skins were dry, their lips black and cracked, and all of them looked
very afraid.
At the end
of
the nineteenth century, a metal object falls from
the sky over the south of England, making a large hole in the
ground. People come to see what it is, and surround the hole in
great numbers. When one end of the object starts to open, the
watchers realize that it is hollow. Are there men inside? But the
creatures that come out are not human .. .
Slowly, people begin to understand that these visitors have
come from Mars. A small group of scientists approaches, but they,
and many of the other people who have come to watch, are
killed. A second object lands, then a third, and more. Are the
Martians trying to take planet Earth?
Most of the story takes place around the town of Woking, a town
to the south-west of London where H. G. Wells was living when he
wrote
The War of the Worlds -
and in London itself. The book
appeared in 1898, at the end of a century in which Britain became
the most powerful country in the world. Life, at least for people who
had a reasonable amount of money, was comfortable and safe.
However, in this book Wells looks forward to the coming
century, the twentieth century, when great wars would be fought
with machines and roads would be filled with desperate refugees
trying to escape the fighting.
This story has many interesting things to say about space and
space creatures, but it also says a lot about our own society and
the dangers of the world today.
v
H. G. Wells was born in 1866 into quite a poor family. His father
had been a gardener and his mother worked as a servant. His
parents later opened a small shop, which was not successful and
closed when Wells was thirteen. He was a boy who liked to read
and study, and it was not easy to find a suitable job for him. He
worked at different times in a clothes shop and a chemists shop,
and as a schoolteacher.
He was very lucky to escape from this when he was given a
free place at a science college. He left there with a degree. Then,
at the age of twenty-one, he was kicked very badly during a
football match. While he recovered, he had the time and a good
reason to write.
His writing was an immediate success. His first novel,
The Time
Machine,
appeared in 1895, and he also wrote short stories and
did other work, often humorous, for newspapers and magazines.
Not everything that he produced was science fiction. Novels like
Kipps, Tono-Bungay
and
The History of Air Polly
take their stories
from the difficult times he had in his early life. These are still
worth reading. However, they are part of their time, while books
like
The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The first Men in the
Moon
and
The Sleeper Awakes
are still very popular today.
The War of the Worlds
is, of course, also remembered because of
Orson Welles's radio broadcast in 1938. In this broadcast the
story was moved from the south of England to New Jersey in the
United States, and it seemed to listeners that the action was
happening at the time of the programme. In fact, it was even
interrupted by an announcer reading a report of that day's news.
The broadcast had an unexpected effect - many listeners
thought that the Martians really were landing in New Jersey.
Soon people all over the eastern United States were getting into
their cars and trying to escape. Some had wet towels over their
heads to protect them from the Martian poison gas.
When H. G. Wells heard about the broadcast, he was not very
VI
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