Book Description

"It never was a war, any more than there's war between man and ants." At first, they were just a joke, feeble blobs barely able to move in the oppressive gravity of Earth. Within days, they had become the single biggest threat in the history of humanity. When H.G. Wells penned The War of the Worlds in 1898, London was the center of the known human universe; Wells' dark novel sets about destroying civilization by striking at it's most glorious and shining city, at a time when man was decades away from space travel. The swift and terrible attacks of the Martians lay waste to the technological firepower of the esteemed British military, and the populace shifts from apathetic ambivalence to panic. Not just a science fiction tale, Wells' story takes to task the easy, taken-for-granted lives of the citizens of a superpower, and his themes still ring true over a century later. Follow the harrowing flight of the narrator as he scraps and claws for survival as the human race is swept aside by ruthless invaders; His life quickly devolves to that of an animal, hiding and cowering in the dank rubble of a ruined city. The invaders are advanced and merciless; they decimate the armies with "heat rays" and blast toxic "black death" into the choked streets of London. No one is safe. Wells' bleak masterpiece is essential reading; it laid the groundwork for thousands of stories which followed.