The War of the Worlds by H G Wells

This book from 1898 has been one of the more influential books of the last 100 years. There have been several movie adaptions including the Tom Cruise vehicle a few years ago that was quite successful. Most of us have heard the story of the panic caused by a reading of the story on a New Jersey radio station in the nineteen thirties. As people tuned into the channel they could not differentiate if this was a story or an actual news reporting.


In the story we have an unnamed author telling of a Martin invasion of England. Cylinders fall on England and it soon becomes apparent that inside these cylinders are aliens. These aliens quickly subdue the humans who are in their vicinity. Humans who are innocently curious to those with more aggressive motives are all laid waste with the heat rays and disabling black clouds that the aliens possess.


Our author in his escape leaves his wife in a village called Leatherhead wiht plans to return to get her but in the story he never does get back. We see him in his travails, coming into close contact with the aliens, being fortunate enough to survive some chance encounters, and also meeting up with various survivors and other refugees.

A story like this will always have an audience. We, as humans, are prone to wondering about other beings. Just last year the physicist Stephen Hawking advised that our attempts to send messages to outer space might well be a fools errand. His reasoning, that aliens that do travel to our solar system would most likely not be coming on a friendly mission and we might not want to attract their attention.

One of the more interesting aspects of the story is Wells writing for the main character that features him wondering if the human race now will suffer what the lower creatures on Earth have felt since mans rise. That is are we now just rabbits and ants to the martians and if so is that a just retribution for our treatment of lesser creatures.

Another is that the method of the defeat of the aliens. Certainly not one you would obviously think about, and certainly not the traditional victory method, but one cognizant of scientific realities or at that time theories it actually makes significant amounts of sense in the way it is presented.

This is another fine book. I will now have to, at some point, have to read The Invisible Man to complete my H G Wells lessons but he certainly deserves his place in the pantheons of great writers.

The Time Machine by H G Wells

This book was downloadable for free on Ibooks. An H G Wells book written in 1995 The Time Machine was the beginning of future apocolayptic literature.

The book has been made into numerous plays, movies and televison shows. Being written over one hundred years ago it does age well.

The truth is we do not know what the future holds and Wells writing is as plausible as any. As one of the books often assigned by our English teachers the book has a subtext, a moral as it were, and Wells wishes us to consider that the loss of challenges, the conquering of all problems in the world in our lives would in the end leave us weak and unable to function at the high levels we currently do.

This is not a hard theory to follow. Look at a person in today's world that has been born rich and had his money make sure nothing hard or difficult ever happens to him. Now imagine him as a survivor in a post apocolyptic world where his money does not protect him. It is easy to see that if humans life becomes too easy then we as a race may not be able to withstand unexpected challenges and changes to our enviroment.

In the story we learn no names of the characters. A scientist living in England that we know only as The Time Traveler invites several members of his community to tell them of his invention of a time machine. He shows them a small model, demonstrates it " zooming " into the future and leaves them to contemplate it. A week later the visitors return to another requested meeting. The Time Traveler enters, a dissheveled dusty mess of a man and after eating like only a famished man can tells a story of what has transpired to him.

He tells of his trip in the time machine. He travels a million or more years ahead in time. As he stops he arrives in the same place but is greeted by a happy group of people who appear to be human but are very small, seem to lack any intellect or attention span, and are happy all day, eating a diet of strictly fruit. Nightfall changes their attitude into one of cowering and fear and The Time Traveler soon learns why. Another race of people exist. A group of what he would call subhumans, white in color, all over, who live underground.

As he ponders the relationship between the two groups he soon comes to a conclusion that goes beyond his initial impression. It scares him and shakes him to the core to see the future. This is where the moral of the story comes from. That is he sees that humans have " advanced" to a state where they have lost to put it bluntly their edge.

Escaping from this place in time he moves forward further and further until he comes to a space in time where all life appears to have vanished and the earth is covered with snow year round. He sees an eclipse and then as it passes sees another creature, a lizard or reptile of some sort moving towards him and leaves in horror. He returns home and as he finishes his story his guests clearly do not believe him.

The book is narrated by both The Time Traveler telling his story and one of the guests, the unnamed narrator who after hearing the story struggles to sleep. He resolves to return to The Time Travlers's home and speak with him again. As he enters he sees the Scientist gathering a backpack and camera, clearly preparing to leave again on his Machine. The narrator gets to the lab just in time to see a transparent image of him as he disappears. Knowing now that the story is true he resolves to wait for his return. Three years later the Time Traveler has not returned and our narrator still wonders where and when he is.

This is a very good book. It is easy to read, much easier than many of the classics of this era, and has aged very well. While dated it still is easily adaptable to modern theory.