Resumen
Resumen de The War of the Worlds
Para quién es
For readers who love science fiction at its roots, Victorian England, and fast stories with real ideas behind them. Alien invasion, panic, and human resilience bring those tastes together.
De qué trata este libro
Imagine looking up one night and seeing a flash of fire on Mars, and then a star falling onto a quiet English common. The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells, turns that moment into a full invasion of southern England. Wells wrote it when Britain ruled the largest empire on earth, and few readers had pictured their own country being conquered. You follow one ordinary writer from Woking, who sets down what he saw and learned in a calm voice. You meet fear, flight and ruined towns, and a close study of people when the old rules stop working.
En este resumen
- 1Strange lights on Mars come before the landingFree
- 2A white flag is answered with fire
- 3Tripods stride over the Thames valley
- 4In London, panic spreads faster than the Martians
- 5Buried in a ruined house, the narrator watches and waits
- 6Empire, nature and a narrator who only reports
Idea clave 1 de 6
Strange lights on Mars come before the landing
The novel opens with a warning that the earth is being watched. Mars is older than the earth and nearer to the end of its life. Its people need a new home, and the earth offers a warmer home.
The narrator visits his friend Ogilvy, an astronomer, who has seen a burst of glowing gas on Mars. Most people take the news lightly. Soon afterward a shooting star seems to fall on Horsell Common, near Woking. Ogilvy finds a huge cylinder half buried in a pit, too hot to touch, with faint movements inside.
The top begins to unscrew from within. People assume poor travellers are trapped inside, and they try to help. What comes out is a grey, glistening shape as large as a bear, with dark eyes and tentacles. The narrator runs. Wells places a small moment of village curiosity right beside disaster.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Who’s who
- The narrator
- An unnamed writer living in Woking witnesses the Martian landing and struggles to return to his wife.
- The narrator's wife
- The writer's wife takes shelter with relatives in Leatherhead while her husband faces the spreading invasion.
- The Martians
- Invaders from Mars attack southern England with fighting machines, confronting the narrator with a radically superior enemy.
- The narrator's brother
- A medical student in London, he helps two women escape the capital as panic spreads.
- The curate
- A frightened clergyman shares the narrator's shelter in a ruined house, where his distress threatens their safety.
- The artilleryman
- A soldier encountered by the narrator imagines rebuilding human society underground beyond the Martians' reach.
- Ogilvy
- An astronomer at Ottershaw observes activity on Mars and discovers the cylinder that the narrator investigates.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 61,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 4 h 5 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary; paperback, hardcover and large print at cost
- LanguagesEnglish and 14 other languages
Questions about The War of the Worlds
What is The War of the Worlds about?
It tells of Martians who land in southern England in cylinders and attack with machines and heat weapons. An ordinary narrator describes the invasion, the flight of the population and his struggle to survive.
Is The War of the Worlds a true story?
No. It is fiction by H. G. Wells, serialised in 1897 and published as a book in 1898. The 1938 radio broadcast of the story later caused a famous scare, but the novel itself is invented.
Who is the narrator of The War of the Worlds?
He is never named. He tells the story afterward, as a plain record of what he saw and felt.
What is the Heat-Ray in The War of the Worlds?
It is a Martian weapon, a beam that sets things on fire at once. The narrator first sees it burn a group of people who approach the pit with a white flag.
Is The War of the Worlds hard to read?
Not very. The chapters are short and the plot moves fast. The story is clear and the scenes are vivid.