6 h 47 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 6 h 47 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when the people who rule an empire find themselves helpless before invaders from another world?
In H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, strange lights on Mars come before cylinders land in southern England. An unnamed writer in Woking watches the first arrival. Soon, towering fighting machines move through the countryside, and his familiar world becomes a place of flight and fear. His wish to find his wife gives survival a deeply personal urgency.
Meanwhile, the narrator’s brother, a medical student in London, faces a capital gripped by panic. Heat rays and black smoke threaten more than human lives: they strip away the belief that civilization means safety. Behind the swift story, Wells asks readers to consider conquest from the conquered side, and to watch how people behave when ordinary rules no longer hold.
What you’ll discover
- First contact turns terrifying Watch human hopes of communication meet a force they neither understand nor control.
- Machines above the rooftops Picture vast metal tripods striding through the Thames valley with an almost living motion.
- An ordinary man's struggle Follow a writer whose longing to reach his wife cuts through the wider catastrophe.
- An empire under threat Explore Wells’s challenge to human arrogance through an invasion that reverses the familiar roles.
- People without their certainties Encounter fear, bold plans, and fragile resolve as familiar structures of safety fall apart.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this if you like invasion stories, eyewitness accounts of disaster, and science fiction that asks what people do when their world breaks.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Mars is watched while Earth feels safe
- A strange cylinder opens on Horsell Common
- The Heat Ray ends all hope of talking
- Soldiers and storms cannot hold the invaders
- Weybridge shows courage but little hope
- London flees and ships run for the sea
- Buried in a ruined house with a madman
- The artilleryman dreams of living underground
- Empire turned back on the empire builders
- Panic, faith and the thin line of order
- A witness tells the tale in plain, vivid scenes
Who’s who
- The narratorA writer on philosophy who lives at Maybury and watches the invasion from the first cylinder onward, trying to reach his wife.
- OgilvyAn astronomer at Ottershaw who observes the flashes on Mars and discovers the cylinder, but doubts that humanlike beings inhabit the planet.
- The narrator's wifeTakes shelter with cousins at Leatherhead after the narrator drives her away from the fighting.
- The artillerymanA gunner who survives the first battle and later insists humans can live on by hiding underground and learning.
- The curateA shaken clergyman who meets the narrator after Weybridge and cannot make sense of the destruction around him.
- The narrator's brotherA medical student in London who joins the great flight north and tries to reach the coast with two women.
- Miss ElphinstoneA calm young woman who defends herself with a revolver and helps the brother when robbers attack their carriage.
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The War of the Worlds
by H. G. Wells · 1898
A cylinder lands on Horsell Common, its lid starts to unscrew, and the crowd leans in to see what climbs out.
Medium level5–10 hours to readEnglish
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In short
What would you do if a shooting star landed on your village common and began to unscrew itself? That is the question H.
The War of the Worlds at a glance
- Reading time
- About 4 h3 h 10 min fast, 4 h 45 min slow
- Length
- 56,800 words17 chapters
- Pages
- 167 pages251 in large print
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1898by H. G. Wells
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Mars is watched while Earth feels safe
The book opens with a warning about human vanity. Wells says that people of the late nineteenth century went about their small affairs as sure of their rule as tiny creatures in a drop of water. Meanwhile, cooler and more ruthless minds on Mars were studying Earth and planning a move.
Mars is older than Earth and is cooling toward the end of its life. Its people look across space at a warm green planet and see their only escape. The narrator asks whether humans, who wiped out the Tasmanians and the dodo, have any right to complain of such mercilessness.
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Also in the H. G. Wells Book Set: Five Novels
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- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1898
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 4 h 25 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Wells, H. G. The War of the Worlds. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-war-of-the-worlds.
Wells, H. G. (2026). The war of the worlds. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-war-of-the-worlds (Original work published 1898)
Wells, H. G. The War of the Worlds. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-war-of-the-worlds.
@book{wells2026war,
author = {Wells, H. G.},
title = {The War of the Worlds},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-war-of-the-worlds},
note = {First published 1898}
}
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What is The War of the Worlds about?
It tells how Martians land in cylinders near London early in the twentieth century, destroy armies with a Heat Ray and poisonous smoke, and force the narrator and many others to flee, hide and wonder whether humanity can survive.
Who are the Martians in The War of the Worlds?
They are intelligent beings from a cooling Mars who arrive to take Earth for themselves. Wells describes them as large heads with big eyes and tentacles, who ride in tripod fighting machines and feed on the blood of living creatures.
Is The War of the Worlds a true story?
No, it is a work of fiction by H. G. Wells, first published in the late 1890s. He placed the invasion in real English places and in the form of an eyewitness account, which gives it a convincing, documentary feel.
The author
H. G. Wells
1866–1946 · English science fiction novelist
H. G. Wells (1866–1946) was an English writer born in Bromley, Kent. He wrote novels, short stories and nonfiction. His novels included The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898). He died in London.
More by H. G. Wells
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