Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
— H. G. Wells (1898), The War of the Worlds
The coming of the Martians
First Martian emerging from the cylinder that had fallen from the sky. Illustration by Henrique Alvim CorrêaThe novel opens in the mid-1890s, with aliens on Mars plotting an invasion of Earth because their resources were dwindling. The main narrative ("The Great Disillusionment") takes place in the early 20th century, in the summer, when an object thought to be a meteor lands on Horsell Common, near the narrator's home. It turns out to be an artificial cylinder that was launched towards Earth several months earlier as Earth and Mars approached opposition. Martians emerge briefly, but have difficulty coping with Earth's atmosphere and gravity. When humans approach the cylinder with a white flag, the Martians incinerate them using a heat ray. Military forces arrive that night.
The next day, the narrator takes his wife to safety in Leatherhead by means of a dog-cart rented from the local pub landlord, but returns home by himself immediately after in order to return the vehicle. That night, he sees a three-legged Martian "fighting-machine" (tripod), armed with a heat-ray and a chemical weapon: the poisonous "black smoke". Tripods have wiped out the army around the cylinder and destroyed most of Woking. The narrator approaches his own house and finds the landlord dead in the front garden, killed by a Martian attack. While keeping watch from an upper floor window, he offers shelter to an artilleryman who has fled after his company was wiped out attacking the cylinder. The narrator and the artilleryman try to escape back towards Leatherhead, but are separated during a Martian attack between Shepperton and Weybridge. As refugees try to cross the River Wey, the army destroys a tripod with artillery fire, and the Martians retreat. The narrator travels to Walton, where he meets a curate.
Martians discharging Heat-Rays in the Thames Valley. Illustration by Henrique Alvim CorrêaThe Martians attack again and people begin to flee London, including the narrator's brother, who travels with a Mrs Elphinstone and her sister-in-law to keep them safe. They reach the coast and buy passage to Continental Europe. Tripods attack, but a torpedo ram, HMS Thunder Child, destroys two of them before being destroyed itself (a third is either destroyed in the detonation of the ship ammunition stores, or flees unseen in the resultant smoke), and the evacuation fleet escapes. Soon, all organised resistance collapses, and Martians roam the shattered landscape unhindered.
The Earth under the Martians
At the beginning of Book Two, the narrator and the curate witness a Martian machine seizing people and tossing them into a carrier. The narrator realises that the Martian invaders may have plans for their victims. When a fifth Martian cylinder lands, both men are trapped beneath the ruins of a house. The narrator describes Martian anatomy and how they use living creatures' blood to nourish themselves. The two men's relationship deteriorates, and eventually, the narrator knocks the curate unconscious. A Martian removes the curate's body, but the narrator escapes detection.
The Martians abandon the cylinder's crater, and the narrator emerges from the collapsed house and heads for West London. En route, he finds Martian red weed everywhere, prickly vegetation spreading wherever there is abundant water, but slowly dying. On Putney Heath, he encounters the artilleryman again. After abandoning him, he begins to go mad from his trauma, finally attempting suicide by approaching a stationary fighting machine on Primrose Hill. To his surprise, he discovers that all the Martians have been killed by an onslaught of earthly pathogens, to which they had no immunity.
The narrator suffers a nervous breakdown and is nursed back to health by a kind family. Eventually, he returns to Woking, and discovers that his wife has survived. In the last chapter, he reflects on the Martian invasion, its impact on humanity's view of itself and the future, and the effect it has had on his mind.
