15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The classic still packs a punch, July 28, 2005
This review is from: The War of the Worlds (Hardcover)
This is an edition to savor as Gorey's black and white illustrations really add to the creepiness and horror of the Martian invasion as only Gorey's illustrations could do.
As Gorey points out in the intro, at the dawn of the 20th century, no one would have believed in an alien invasion of earth by a superior intelligence. So one thing that distinguishes the novel is Wells's ability to decribe a realistic human response to an unrealistic event.
Some of that complacency is evident right from the start in the novel, as the humans are at first relunctant to admit the full extent of the danger, believing the authorities and the military have taken the necessary precautions and can contain any serious threats. This is despite the fact that several dozen people get incinerated by the heat ray in the initial attempt to communicate with the Martians.
Then there is a creeping sense of dread at the fragmentary but disturbing news from the front, but still the humans don't fully comprehend or are willing to accept the situation. When they finally do, an all out panic ensues, the chaos, desperation, hopelessness, and enormity of which Wells spends much of the novel describing as town after town is abandoned as the Martians advance, and the countryside is filled with literally millions of starving, thirsty, exhausted, and injured people. Many people are killed in the panic and stampede, rather than by the Martians. As Wells says, it is the rout of civilization and the massacre of the human race.
I had a few comments about the tripods and their weapons. In the book, the tripods have a heat ray with a rotating parabolic reflector to aim the beam, which is invisible since it is made up of heat waves. The second weapon is a missile containing a thick, heavy, oily, and poisonous black smoke and gas which hugs the ground and seeps into every nook and cranny, suffocating and poisoning anything that breathes it. The combination of the two weapons makes the tripods unbeatable and nothing can stop their deliberate and measured advance. The movies' versions are different obviously, but this is how it was in the original book.
There is also very little actual description of the tripods, except that they are described as being about 100 feet tall, cylindrical in shape with a rotating cowl on top, presumably for aiming the heat ray. I don't recall the color, but the metal cylinders they arrive in are a strange whitish- yellow color. Here Wells does something interesting as he says the metal gives off four lines in the blue region of the spectrum, indicating that he was familiar with the science of mass spectometry, something most people would never have heard of.
Also, contrary to the movie portrayals, there is only one Martian per tripod. Wells's view of the Martians is that they are mainly brains with vestigial bodies who occupy whatever machines they need to do their work.
Some of the astronomy is obsolete but necessary for the plot; for example, the Martians have come here because their planet condensed before the earth from the original primordial nebula and Mars is therefore much older than the earth and is cooling and dying a slow death. But this isn't really true.
One minor quip about the novel. One odd thing about Wells's account is that he is very fond of smoke and dust. There is dust and smoke everywhere, including green smoke, black smoke, and a ubiquitous fine, gray dust. London and its environs, it seems, are sort of like a Hoover vacuum bag turned inside-out. However, most of the time, one never sees the Martian tripods responsible for all of this smoke, except for one scene where the smoke carrying rockets are described. However, this is interesting in that Wells's description prefigures the phosgene gas weapons and attacks of WWI 17 years later.
Also, he often speaks of artillery guns and batteries going off in the distance although one rarely gets to see them in action. Usually Wells just says they could be heard (and there was also smoke visible), but that's it.
On a more positive note, his account of the Torpedo Ram boat, which brings down two of the Martian tripods that were wading in the harbor, is probably the most dramatic and interesting battle scene in the entire book. My sense is that Wells, being a former teacher, isn't that comfortable describing military actions and strategy and so the novel glosses over much of that.
Another curious aspect of the novel is if I remember right, one never learns the name of the narrator of the story or of his medical student brother. But it seems clear that the writer, who admits to being "speculative philosopher" and writer on morals, is Wells himself.
One final comment about the book. Although it's only about 200 pages long, few novels in the history of science fiction portray such a dire, dismal, hopeless, and pretty much depressing story throughout the entire novel as War of the Worlds does. In many ways, the sci-fi genre was a literature of optimism as it was still felt in the early years of the 20th century that science could solve all social problems and the future for humans and for society was bright. Wells's novel is almost unique in pointing out the risks of science and that the universe might be a bigger, more dangerous place than we had thought. Written at the end of the Gay Nineties, Wells's novel sounds an uncharacteristically cautious and sober note about mankind's possible future.
But despite the overall downer theme and message, it's still one of the greatest classics of science fiction, and as the archetypal alien invasion novel it has probably never been surpassed.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly Disturbing, May 18, 2005
This review is from: The War of the Worlds (Hardcover)
"War of the Worlds", the grand-daddy of all alien invasion novels - and easily the most famous - has endured for many reasons, among which is its ability to reflect the anxieties present in successive ages since it was written. Currently, and not surprisingly perhaps, it carries a very post-9/11 feel. This is a story of gradually mounting terror and the panic that ensues, triggered by an incident whose momentous import is unappreciated initially. The world changes and the previous age's complacency can never be retrieved.
Wells's ability to capture a believable human response to an unbelievable occurence is what keeps the story grounded and genuinely frightening. This edition, illustrated by one of the great masters of the mischieviously macabre, is one to savour in these unsettling times.
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