The War of the Worlds
Hello all!
I did not get posts out over the past few weeks, since I was studying for a test. In my defence, I didn’t sign up for this, I thought I would have a loyal legion of brothers to help. Evidently, I was wrong. I’m also going to try and post at the end of the week, where I usually have more time.
Today I’m reviewing one of my favourites, a book that I actually read by choice rather than for schoolwork. It is H.G. Wells’s “The War of the Worlds”.
In it, a race of super-intelligent, super-evolved Martians decide that Earth looks a lot better than their own dying planet, and use a massive cannon to shoot some invaders over.
These Martians must have been made of stern stuff, as humans would die if they tried to space-travel like that.
The capsules land in England, and the Martians get to work instantly. They use a heat-ray to annihilate a group of curious humans that come to investigate, and quickly assemble their war machines.
They then go on a rampage, using their superior weaponry to destroy the human forces, targeting infrastructure and dealing high casualties.
From what I’ve read of his books, Wells was a bit of a pessimist, and this book underlines his usual gloomy outlook. The Martians are merciless, and are set to conquer the entire world. There was that one time that they were surprised by an ironclad in the English Channel, but other than that, their Tripods were indestructible.
The Martians are only defeated they fall prey to their fatal weakness: a complete lack of an immune system. Apparently, there were no germs on Mars, so when the Martians touchdown, they all die of disease.
The tactics the Martians used in the book were ruthlessly effective, and forty years later they were fully incorporated into modern warfare, by the Nazi “Blitzkrieg”, or “lightning war”, which allowed them to conquer France at lightning speed.
Wells had a habit of predicting the future in his books.
The title of the book is a bit misleading, I previously imagined it as a worldwide conflict against invading aliens, but in fact, the Martians never leave England. They don’t even leave the vicinity of London.
A better title might have been, “The War of the Area Around London”.
Hmm…
That doesn’t really have the same ring to it. I’ll leave the name alone.
The story of this book is grim, but it still makes my list of good books, and some of the passages are amongst my favourites (namely, the one about the ironclad).
According to my mother, each post needs a picture, so I’ve been sticking random pictures that appear to be related to my posts. Here is to most random of the lot, the aliens in this book do NOT look like this.
