The War of the Worlds - Knowledge (XXG)

585: 674: 906: 949: 2115: 1473: 1568:, in that the more advanced Martians exercise their 'rights' as a superior race over humans. Social Darwinism implied that the success of different ethnic groups in world affairs, and social classes in a society, were the result of evolutionary struggle in which the group or class more fit to succeed did so. In more recent times, the use to such arguments to justify the position of the rich and powerful, or dominant groups is regarded as dubious at best. 288: 1607: 1248:. Modern scientific understanding renders this idea impractical, as it would be difficult to control the trajectory of the gun precisely, and the force of the explosion necessary to propel the cylinder from the Martian surface to the Earth would likely kill the occupants. However there has been renewed interest in this type of launch system in recent years with several space agencies conducting feasibility studies into 2026:. The first two-thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of news bulletins, often described as having led to outrage and panic by listeners who believed the events described in the program to be real. However, later critics pointed out that the supposed panic was exaggerated by newspapers of the time, seeking to discredit radio as a source of news and information or exploit racial stereotypes. 1138: 713:

manor house. The narrator learns from his observations how Martian anatomy works and how they use living creatures' blood to nourish themselves. The two men's relationship deteriorates as the curate slowly falls into despair, and when he tries to eat their remaining food supplies, the narrator knocks him unconscious. A passing Martian removes the curate's body, but the narrator escapes detection.

2101: 1063: 208: 84: 43: 1399:". There is a high level of science fiction abstraction in Wells's description of Martian automotive technology; he stresses how Martian machinery is devoid of wheels. They use "a complicated system of sliding parts" to produce movement, possess multiple whip-like tentacles for grasping, and paralleling animal motion, "quasi-muscles abounded in the crablike handling machine". 4241: 150: 844: 763:, with characteristics similar to author Wells at the time of writing. The reader learns little about the background of the narrator or indeed of anyone else in the novel; characterisation is unimportant. In fact, few of the principal characters are named, aside from the astronomer Ogilvy and Miss and Mrs Elphinstone. 1572:

scientist, he was able to relate his experiences of struggle to Darwin's idea of a world of struggle; but saw science as a rational system, which extended beyond traditional ideas of race, class and religious notions, and in his fiction challenged the use of science to explain political and social norms of the day.

1439:, with the Martians whose longer period of successful evolution on the older Mars has led to them developing a superior intelligence, able to create weapons far in advance of humans on the younger planet Earth, who have not had the opportunity to develop sufficient intelligence to construct similar weapons. 704:, destroys two of them before being destroyed itself (a third is either destroyed in the detonation of the ship's ammunition stores, or flees unseen in the resultant smoke), and the evacuation fleet escapes. Soon, all organised resistance collapses, and Martians roam the shattered landscape unhindered. 1352:

as it would be developed by the German armed forces four decades later. The description of the Martians advancing inexorably, at lightning speed, towards London; the British Army completely unable to put up an effective resistance; the British government disintegrating and evacuating the capital; the

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that the British public was presented with an adversary completely superior to themselves. A significant motivating force behind the success of the British Empire was its use of sophisticated technology; the Martians, also attempting to establish an empire on Earth, have technology superior to their

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The Martian invasion's principal weapons are the Heat-Ray and the poisonous Black Smoke. Their strategy includes the destruction of infrastructure such as armament stores, railways, and telegraph lines; it appears to be intended to cause maximum casualties, leaving humans without any will to resist.

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The scientific fascinations of the novel are established in the opening chapter. The narrator views Mars through a telescope, and Wells offers the image of the superior Martians having observed human affairs, as though watching tiny organisms through a microscope. In August 1894, a French astronomer

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At the beginning of Book Two, the narrator and the curate witness a Martian machine seizing people and tossing them into a metal carrier. The narrator realises that the Martian invaders may have plans for their victims. When a fifth Martian cylinder lands, both men are trapped beneath the ruins of a

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and Sirius who, though human in appearance, are of immense size and visit the Earth out of curiosity. At first the difference in scale between them and the peoples of Earth makes them think the planet is uninhabited. When they discover the haughty Earth-centric views of Earth philosophers, they are

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outbursts and ravings attracting the attention of the Martians, appears an indictment of his obsolete religious attitudes; but the Narrator twice prays to God, and suggests that bacteria may have been divinely allowed to exist on Earth for a reason such as this, suggesting a more nuanced critique.

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The novel also suggests a potential future for human evolution and perhaps a warning against overvaluing intelligence against more human qualities. The Narrator describes the Martians as having evolved an overdeveloped brain, which has left them with cumbersome bodies, with increased intelligence,

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in London. It describes a covert invasion by aliens who take on the appearance of human beings and attempt to develop a virulent disease to assist in their plans for global conquest. It was not widely read, and consequently Wells's vastly more successful novel is generally credited as the seminal

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Wells is credited with establishing several extraterrestrial themes which were later greatly expanded by science fiction writers in the 20th century, including first contact and war between planets and their differing species. There were, however, stories of aliens and alien invasion prior to the

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The Narrator refers to an 1893 publication suggesting that the evolution of the human brain might outstrip the development of the body, and organs such as the stomach, nose, teeth, and hair would wither, leaving humans as thinking machines, needing mechanical devices much like the Tripod fighting

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Wells grew up in a society where the merit of an individual was not considered as important as their social class. His father was a professional sportsman, and seen as inferior to 'gentle' status. His mother was a domestic servant, and Wells himself was initially apprenticed to a draper. As a

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in science fiction writing. These include Mars being an ancient world; nearing the end of its life; being the home of a superior civilisation capable of advanced feats of science and engineering; and also being a source of invasion forces, keen to conquer the Earth. The first two tropes were

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was the predominant colonial power on the globe, making its domestic heart a poignant and terrifying starting point for an invasion by Martians with their own imperialist agenda. Wells also drew on a common fear that emerged in the years approaching the turn of the century, known as the

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and is nursed back to health by a kind family. Eventually, he returns to Woking, and discovers that his wife has survived. In the last chapter, he reflects on the Martian invasion, its impact on humanity's view of itself and the future, and the effect it has had on his mind.

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had "a very distinct success". The story did even better as a book, and reviewers rated it as "the very best work he has yet produced", and highlighting the story's originality in showing Mars in a new light through the concept of an alien invasion of Earth. Writing for

1047:, Sidney Brooks admired Wells's writing style: "he has complete check over his imagination, and makes it effective by turning his most horrible of fancies into the language of the simplest, least startling denomination". Praising Wells's "power of vivid realization", 756:

presents itself as a factual account of the Martian invasion. It is considered one of the first works to theorise the existence of a race intelligent enough to invade Earth. The narrator is a middle-class writer of philosophical papers, reminiscent of Doctor Kemp in

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Wells has also imagined how life could evolve in hostile conditions, like those on Mars. The creatures have no digestive system, no appendages except tentacles and put the blood of other beings in their veins to survive. Wells was writing some years before

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has inspired seven films, as well as various radio dramas, comics, video games, television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. Most are set in different locations or eras to the original novel. Among the adaptations is the

5688: 724:, he encounters the artilleryman again, but soon abandons him when the man tries to convince him that they should keep fighting the Martians. Driven mad by his trauma, he finally attempts suicide by approaching a stationary fighting machine on 1213:

speculated about an arid, dying landscape, whose inhabitants built canals to bring water from the polar caps to irrigate the remaining arable land. This encapsulated contemporary scientific ideas about conditions on the red planet at the time

1182:. These ideas combined to present the possibility that planets are alike in composition and conditions for the development of species, which would likely lead to the emergence of life at a suitable geological age in a planet's development. 565:

Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against

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and the Heat-Ray was made as early as the later half of the 1950s when lasers were still in development. Prototypes of mobile laser weapons have been developed and are being researched and tested as a possible future weapon in space.

1743:. It was a long-winded book concerned with a civil war on Mars. Another Mars novel, this time dealing with benevolent Martians coming to Earth to give humankind the benefit of their advanced knowledge, was published in 1897 by 688:

The Martians attack again, and people begin to flee London, including the narrator's brother, who travels with his neighbor, Mrs. Elphinstone and her sister-in-law to keep them safe. They reach the coast and buy passage to

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reviewer wrote, "the imagination, the extraordinary power of presentation, the moral significance of the book cannot be contested". There was, however, some criticism of the brutal nature of the events in the narrative.

1205:(Italian for "channels"). This was mistranslated into English as "canals" which, being artificial watercourses, fuelled the belief in intelligent extraterrestrial life on the planet. This influenced American astronomer 1917:. Wyndham, without mentioning Wells' book by name, mentions in the opening chapter of his notes that an invasion of Earth by extraterrestrials might turn out to be "very different from how it was depicted in fiction". 869:

came from his brother during one of these walks, pondering on what it might be like if alien beings were suddenly to descend on the scene. A 23 feet (7.0 m) high sculpture of a tripod fighting machine, entitled

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has never been out of print: it spawned numerous feature films, radio dramas, a record album, comic book adaptations, television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. It was dramatised in a

1885:, another key science fiction editor of the era, and periodic short story writer, published several alien invasion stories in the 1930s. Many well-known science fiction writers were to follow, including 5564: 819:, setting out ideas about life on Mars. Wells speculates on the nature of Martian inhabitants and how their evolutionary progress might compare to humans. These ideas are used almost unchanged in 5890: 874:, based on descriptions in the novel stands in Crown Passage close to the local railway station in Woking, designed and constructed in 1998 by artist Michael Condron. Fifty meters further up the 603:

after consuming the natural resources of their home world. The main narrative ("The Great Disillusionment") takes place in the early 20th century, in the summer, when an object thought to be a

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who has fled after his company was wiped out attacking the cylinder. The narrator and the artilleryman try to escape back towards Leatherhead but are separated during a Martian attack between

1584:, and the defeat of the Martians has an entirely material cause: the action of microscopic bacteria. An insane clergyman is important in the novel, but his attempts to relate the invasion to 400: 646:. The narrator approaches his own house and finds the landlord dead in the front garden from inhaling black smoke. While keeping watch from an upper floor window, he offers shelter to an 5667: 2067: 5780: 5775: 4927: 3812: 1804:, fighting against the Martians for generations to come, and eventually, after learning how to duplicate Martian weapon technology, destroys the invaders and takes back the Earth. 5930: 783:

reported sightings of a "strange light" on Mars. Wells used this observation to open the novel, imagining these lights to be the launching of the Martian cylinders toward Earth.

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from April to December 1897. Wells was paid £200 and Pearsons demanded to know the ending of the piece before committing to publish. The complete volume was first published by

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that kills everything. It is the primary machine the Martians use when they invade Earth, along with the handling machine, the flying machine, and the embankment machine.

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in colonial patrols and the army in an Irish insurrection. The German army makes short work of English militia and rapidly marches to London. This story was published in

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Wells's description of chemical weapons – the Black Smoke used by the Martian fighting machines to kill human beings in great numbers – became a reality in

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And before we judge them too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished

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While invasion literature had provided an imaginative foundation for the idea of the heart of the British Empire being conquered by foreign forces, it was not until

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These tactics became more common as the twentieth century progressed, particularly during the 1930s with the development of mobile weapons and technology capable of

779:. Wells later taught science, and his first book was a biology textbook. Much of his work makes contemporary ideas of science and technology easily understandable. 5351: 1800:. When the Narrator meets the artilleryman the second time, the artilleryman imagines a future where humanity, hiding underground in sewers and tunnels, conducts a 802:

that these might be irrigation channels, constructed by a sentient life form to support existence on an arid, dying world. The novel also explores ideas related to

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In the late 1890s it was common for novels to be serialised in magazines or newspapers before publication in full, with each part of the serialisation ending on a

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Wells's depiction of late Victorian suburban culture in the novel was an accurate representation of his own experiences at the time. In the late 19th century, the

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in 1898. Even though these versions are considered unauthorised, Hughes and Geduld speculate that Wells may inadvertently have agreed to the serialisation in the

1701:. The tale included a people who are obsessed with mathematics and more advanced than Europeans scientifically. They populate a floating island fortress called 5145: 4406: 4255: 218: 1510:. Between 1815 and 1914, around 26,000,000 square kilometres (10,000,000 sq mi) of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire. 5960: 5436: 2005: 5925: 5920: 615:. Several Martians emerge and appear to struggle with Earth's gravity and unfamiliar atmosphere. When a human delegation approaches the cylinder waving a 611:, near the narrator's home. It turns out to be an artificial cylinder that was launched towards Earth several months earlier as Earth and Mars approached 584: 5915: 5910: 5875: 4980: 5173: 1757:). It was not translated until 1971, and thus may not have influenced Wells, although it did depict a Mars influenced by the ideas of Percival Lowell. 5728: 4948: 4906: 5935: 5521: 5514: 5402: 2019: 1964: 1957: 1458:

machines, to be able to interact with their environment. This publication is probably Wells's own "The Man of the Year Million", first published in

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The Martians abandon the cylinder's crater, and the narrator emerges from the collapsed house and heads for West London. En route, he finds Martian

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waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

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Between 1871 and 1914 more than 60 works of fiction for adult readers describing invasions of Great Britain were published. The original work was

537:, that reportedly caused panic among listeners who did not know that the events were fictional. The novel even influenced the work of scientists. 5468: 2135: 56: 31: 2315: 5870: 4293: 4123: 4070: 3791: 3730: 3668: 3174: 3147: 2897: 2862: 2756: 2466: 2252: 1522:, Wells depicted an imperial power as the victim of imperial aggression, and thus perhaps encouraging the reader to consider the morality of 5900: 5865: 5799: 3859: 5713: 966:

Two unauthorised serialisations of the novel were published in the United States prior to publication of the novel. The first was in the

5945: 5905: 5556: 5344: 1992: 639: 3955: 5736: 5720: 5588: 5096: 4994: 4622: 3583: 3342: 2797: 979:, located in a New York setting, between December 1897 and January 1898. The second version had the Martians landing near and around 5604: 5540: 5482: 4913: 4189: 4150: 4101: 4054: 4040: 4010: 3693: 3619: 3530: 3496: 3455: 3421: 3382: 3235: 3114: 3073: 3045: 2979: 2946: 2748: 2724: 2688: 2663: 2565: 2441: 2220: 2030: 265: 247: 189: 131: 70: 1929:

has remained popular to the present day and is frequently used in the plots of movies, television, novels, comics and video games.

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Critic Howard Black wrote that "In concrete details the Martian Fighting Machines as depicted by Wells have nothing in common with

94: 3873: 3198: 673: 619:, the Martians incinerate them using a heat ray. The crowd flees, and that evening a large military force surrounds the cylinder. 5820: 4864: 4773: 865:

in Surrey. There, he spent his mornings walking or cycling in the countryside, and his afternoons writing. The original idea for

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on the surface of Mars. This was a common representation of space travel in the nineteenth century, and had also been used by

5880: 5855: 5755: 5337: 5280: 4857: 4574: 4566: 1357:." Black regarded this 1898 depiction as far closer to the actual land fighting of World War II than Wells's much later work 1088:, which portrays a surprise German attack and landing on the south coast of England, made possible by the distraction of the 1657:, a key figure in the search for extraterrestrial life, acknowledged his debt to reading H. G. Wells's fictions as a child. 3956:"Hear the Prog-Rock Adaptation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds: The 1978 Rock Opera That Sold 15 Million Copies Worldwide" 1987:

reported to be 100 feet (30 meters) tall with multiple, whip-like tentacles used for grasping, and two lethal weapons: the

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greatly amused by how important Earth beings think they are compared to greater beings in the universe such as themselves.

662:, the army is able to destroy a tripod with concentrated artillery fire, and the Martians retreat. The narrator travels to 5895: 5580: 4987: 4843: 4702: 4606: 4598: 3929: 3512: 3437: 2154: 2052: 1976: 1868: 171: 160: 5950: 5860: 5461: 5194: 4542: 4502: 1819: 999: 446: 4265: 3838: 3278: 630:

rented from the local pub landlord but then turns back so he can return it. That night, he sees a three-legged Martian

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everywhere, prickly vegetation spreading wherever there is abundant water, but notices that it is slowly dying. On

229: 167: 101: 62: 2825: 835:(O, A, and B), and showed the challenges of even transfusing blood between humans with incompatible blood groups. 109: 5222: 4390: 4286: 1392: 968: 4201: 508:. Some historians have argued that Wells wrote the book to encourage his readership to question the morality of 5295: 5229: 5215: 5068: 5040: 4752: 4534: 4430: 4311: 815: 542: 1124:. It may also have proved an important foundation for Wells's ideas, as he had never seen or fought in a war. 682: 589: 5496: 5138: 5008: 4462: 2545: 2161: 1436: 1094: 433: 3263:

Black, Howard D. "The accurate and inaccurate predictions of Early Science Fiction". In Field, Jane (ed.).

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was not taken seriously by readers at the time of publication. He later expanded these ideas in the novels

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in May 1871 and was so popular that it was reprinted a month later as a pamphlet which sold 80,000 copies.

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set to Jeff Wayne's score opened in London in 2019. The show uses a blend of virtual reality, volumetric

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Roth, Christopher F. (2005) "Ufology as Anthropology: Race, Extraterrestrials, and the Occult." In

3981:"Dotdotdot | the world premier of Jeff Wayne's the War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience" 2343: 1788:

civilisation on Mars which, while parallel to that of the Earth, has evolved somehow independently.

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or 'end of the age', which anticipated an apocalypse occurring at midnight on the last day of 1899.

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Wells was trained as a science teacher during the latter half of the 1880s. One of his teachers was

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Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition, and the Politics of Science Fiction and Utopia

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established the vernacular term of 'martian' as a description for something offworldly or unknown.

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The War of the Worlds: From H. G. Wells to Orson Welles, Jeff Wayne, Steven Spielberg and Beyond

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with European politics and international disputes, with its introduction of an alien adversary.

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but a diminished ability to use their emotions, something Wells attributes to bodily function.

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was written; ideas which persisted until they were tested by space missions, starting with the

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mass of terrified refugees clogging the roads, all were to be precisely enacted in real life

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fears, superstitions and prejudices. Wells later noted that inspiration for the plot was the

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prior to the First World War, had speculated about building a "fighting-machine" or a "land

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The invasion literature genre provided a familiar base from which to support the success of

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The Last Frontier: Imagining Other Worlds from the Copernican Revolution to Modern Fiction

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