An unnamed narrator delivers a first-person account of his experiences during the Martian invasion of Earth. With his eye on the stars when the first Martian cylinder falls to Earth, and present when a Martian emerges from the cylinder at Woking, the narrator provides a detailed and up-close picture of both the Martians and their terrible weapons as they unleash their fury on London and the English countryside.
Written in 1898, The War of the Worlds was one of the first stories to detail an extraterrestrial invasion of Earth, and demonstrated author H.G. Wells' inventive imagination, as well as his interest in Darwinism and natural selection. The War of the Worlds is best-known for sparking panic during a 1938 Halloween radio performance directed by Orson Welles, who mistook the dramatization as an actual news broadcast. It has also adapted for film, most recently for the 2005 Steven Spielberg film starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning.
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