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Summary: A book that captured the mind and frightened the soul!!
Review: I think this book was great!!!!!! The impressive and breath taking tale describes the Martian invasion of earth. Ten huge tireless beings land in England and complete pandemonium breaks out. Using their burning heat rays and shattering force the pitiless aliens may be able to win in the fight for life. Is the human race doomed? -The War Of The Worlds By: H.G. Wells
Rating:
Summary: A book that captured the mind and frightened the soul!!
Review: The impressive and breath takeing tale describes the Martian invasion of earth. Ten huge tireless beings land in England and complete pandemonium breaks out. Using their burning heat rays and shatering force the pitiless aliens may be able to win in the fight for life. Is the human race doomed? -The War Of The Worlds By: H.G. Wells
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Summary: Great Book Especially For It's Time
Review: I thought this book was extremely well done for being written so many years ago. I read this book just a year ago when I was 13 and loved it. Wells explains everything so well that it gives you just a perfect image in your mind. Wells is the master of science fiction! He came up with so many original, unthought of ideas such as these alien attacks, the classic invisible man, and the most famous the idea of a time machine!
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Summary: Things to come
Review: "... across the vast gulf of space, mind that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts that perish. Intelects, vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded our world with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us." Even after many times in reading, that opening, with visions of the red planet, drying canals and Gustav Holst playing in the backround, plays almost cinimaticaly across my imagination. Surely the best opening to any book I have ever read. While I think "War of the Worlds" stands as Wells's masterpiece, it's too bad that Hollywood has passed over this work. I don't count Gorge Pal's 1960s version, it is standard Cold War fare with the church bells ringing at the end... blech. There have been imitators, of course. "Independance Day" is the most recent, but the only quality treatment of Wells invasion from mars was The Mercury Theater's Halloween 1938 production with Orson Wells. And even that boiled it down to its essentials of invasion, desparation, futility and reprive. "The War of the Worlds" was an exploration of how we, as humans, have treated our own world and the 'aliens' of our own planet. The animals, environments and fellow humans that have been trampled beneath the feet of so-called civilization. We think ourselves those 'vast intellects', taking the world for our own, our advance only irritated by 'godless savages', beings of little consequence. And still, 100 years after it was first published, Wells cautionary tale still holds true. Except that now, the earth is holding us to account as the Martians had to account to the microbes that spelled their demise. Global warming, antibiotic-resistant disease, over-population, species extinction, are these the things that bring to an end our dominion on this earth, the earth that we, in many ways, stole from ourselves, unthinking of the consequences as the Martian were oblivious to the consequences of their invasion? We know Mars to be a dead world but 100 years ago it was widely believed that, not only did Mars have life but it had intelligent life. But until Wells came along with his tentacled horrors to dethrone man kind from his empire over the earth, the earthlings thought looked on those that might one day be found on Mars as they had looked on the natives of Africa, the Americas, India and China; savages to be brought under the tutalage of Western society. The more things change, the more things stay the same. Will Wells's warnings continue to fall on deaf ears?
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Summary: An answer to the question: Are we alone?
Review: Maybe you thought that this was a nice little planet. Maybe you thought that you were safe and secure here on earth. Maybe you thought it would go on like this forever. Maybe you're right. Then again, maybe you're wrong. The people in this story are ordinary people. They have jobs, they go to work, they have their friends. But the folks in this story aren't going to have a regular old Sunday this week. Because this week, a large hollow cylinder will fall from the sky and into a field near their town. Its point of origin: Mars. Its occupants: Martians. The townspeople will, of course, examine it, but most of them won't think anything of it- merely some strange, sluggish creatures from a world far inferior to their own. That is where they're wrong. These creatures possess far more advanced technology than has ever been imagined. Their heat-rays, their poisonous gasses, and their super-strong fighting armor are just a sampling of what these monstrous creatures have to offer- but the worst is yet to come. Th
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Summary: The Original Sci-Fi!
Review: Do you like science fiction? Then read the book the started it all! The original book on alien attack, this book is so weird because it is pure imagination. Wells had nothing to
build on, and this book is the foundation. Jeremy Swanson
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Summary: Worth the read!
Review: While not the science fiction most are used to, this is a haunting and fascinating look at an alien invasion. No courageous fighting back, no sly hero that saves the day; just the pure terror of beings with technology far superior to ours.
Granted, I found the book a tad slow in spots, but overall, it is very well-written and serves as an excellent look into the human psyche when we are the hunted. Enjoy!
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Summary: Still the most superb science fiction written
Review: The British author, H.G. Wells, was a man of many gifts. He wrote the "Outline of History", a superb, two-volume work on man's path through the ages, and many novels about English middle class life. Wells is perhaps best remembered, however, as one of the founders of science fiction. Of his many novels and short stories of this genre, War of the Worlds is one of the best. A cautionary note or two appears appropriate here. First, I hope you read this book before you see any of the movies taken from this novel. Screenwriters uniformly butcher good literature, and this book has suffered more than most at the hands of these amateurs. Second, Wells wrote many of his s/f novels nearly a century ago, and it is neither helpful nor appropriate to an enjoyable reading to compare the scientific knowledge of today with Wells's narratives, which were based on the best science of his time. As opposed to the more famous Jules Verne, Wells is an accomplished novelist, and keen wordsmith. His disciplined writing is geared to an educated, adult mind. You won't find any untied ends, or sheer voyages into fantasy, here. Instead, War of the Worlds is a very believable narrative of what would happen if modern man confronted a vastly superior, ruthless alien invader. The fact that a century has passed and science has learned far more about the physical universe doesn't matter at all. Human nature has not changed, and it is here that Wells is peerless in terms of analytical description. The novel takes place in 1890's-1900's England, at a time when England was the most powerful nation on Earth. The introduction is Genesis-like in quality, describing how man lay somnolent in the face of a gathering alien threat. Without warning, the aliens suddenly appear, and man greets them in innocent gestures of friendship, only to be slaughtered by giant robotic devices carrying heat-rays,(lasers), poison gas, and devices capable of powered flight, none which man had yet invented or used in warfare. The result, of course, is an absolute rout in which the best and worst of people appear. It doesn't spoil things to note that the Martian invaders are beaten by Earth microbes, since everyone knows that anyway. Wells's description of this defeat contains passages as good as any in literature. This book is the first in which man confronts aliens from places other than Earth, and many commentators have tried to draw more from it than appears on its face. Whether Wells intended an oblique criticism of British imperial policy is unknown to this writer, and I suggest that it really doesn't matter. What is apparent is that only quality novels can engender such hypotheses, and the fact that such theories have surfaced shows the depths of Wells's writing. Whether you finish the book viewing it as a morality play, or simply a visonary, well-written work, you will enjoy it immensely. I do not make the statement in jest that I consider it one of best novels ever written. I recommend it very highly.
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Summary: Hard to hate creatures with such cool toys
Review: I don't know if H.G. Wells can take all the credit for pioneering modern science fiction, but his 1898 novel "The War of the Worlds" is certainly a revolutionary stroke, apparently the first conception of what a hostile extraterrestrial invasion would be like. The invaders here are Martians, who, as Wells describes, are superevolved beyond humans, having had to sharpen their intelligence and develop superior technology in order to survive their planet's cold climate. Looking with jealousy towards their larger, warmer sunward planetary neighbor, they have decided to take over Earth, where they can build a new civilization. Meanwhile on Earth, astronomers, their telescopes pointed towards Mars, notice strange luminous flashes on the surface of the red planet; these, it can be surmised, are the Martians launching their interplanetary spacecrafts towards their target. A few months later the crafts land in the English countryside one at a time; it turns out the Martians have traveled in gigantic cylinders which contain all their equipment, including their land vehicles--tall walking tripods with rotating control centers that look like hooded human heads--which evidently are stored in parts and need to be assembled. These machines have weapons that deploy "Heat-Rays" which roast anything on contact and dense black powder which poisons the air and water. With these undeniably cool toys, the Martians have no problems advancing towards London and decimating every living thing in their path. Undiplomatic and incommunicative with earthlings, the Martians are cold-blooded killers with possibly the ultimate goal of enslaving the human species for labor in their colonies. The Martian beings themselves are described as vaguely globular, tentacular monsters that are mostly brain and little else, creatures seemingly borrowed from the distant future of Wells's imagination in "The Time Machine." What I found most original and bizarre about them was Wells's description of their machinery, which does not use wheels or any kind of angular mechanism, but rather complex systems of sliding parts on curved surfaces--in other words, their mechanisms approximate biomechanisms. Their cleverness is indeed formidable, but their information about Earth is lacking in one important area which causes their downfall. The human characters in the novel are hardly worth mentioning, especially the narrator, which is probably why he doesn't have a name; he is used simply as an eyewitness to relate the events. The Martians and their incredible machines were the only things that really drew my interest because Wells is at his best when he invokes the horror of the unknown rather than the realities of human behavior. Upon its first appearance, this novel must have struck many Victorians as distastefully grotesque, the idea of a cataclysmic war (at the dawn of the century that invented the cataclysmic war) the willful nightmare of a madman; but Wells was a visionary if not the most elegant writer, and visionaries sometimes shock us.
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Summary: The War of the Worlds
Review: I was a small boy when I saw George Pal's production of "THE WAR OF THE WORLDS "(Paramount,1953),directed by Byron Haskin.I was thrilled,then.A couple of years later,I read the "Classics Illustrated" adaptation of the novel(actually,the brazilian version of that comics series called,in portuguese, "Clássicos Ilustrados"),and,suddenly,I was enraptured by the sheer magic of H.G.Wells' imagination.IN 1960,I saw MGM's "THE TIME MACHINE",directed by Pal.More magic.After that,I started to read the original science fiction novels(or 'scientific romances'as this novels were called in Wells time)and short stories written by Wells(still in portuguese translations).Time goes by,I became a museum professional here in Brazil,and,in 1977,I was the Curator at a Rio de Janeiro art museum of an exhibition of the original drawings(illustrations)made by the brazilian painter and illustrator Henrique Alvim Corrêa(1876-1910)for a luxurious belgian edition of "The War of the Worlds"("LA GUERRE DES MONDES",L.Vandamme,1906)After the exhibition was over,the older son of the artist,still alive then,and a dear friend of mine,gave me,as a gift,one of the treasures of my small art collection,his copy of the beautiful and amazing poster,created and signed with a monogram by Alvim Corrêa,advertising that marvelous designed "Belle Époque" book.The poster is litographed and depicts one of the martian machines destroying a section of London or a Surrey village with its deadly heat rays.Incidentally,the Alvim Corrêa's drawings are being shown at Seattle's SCIENCE FICTION MUSEUM AND HALL OF FAME,since October30th,2004.
In 1977 too,I read for the first time in english,"The War of the Worlds".Now and again,I reread the novel.Always with pleasure.Herbert George Wells will be,forever,a source of inspiration for me.
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