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The next stop in my end-of-the-world reading marathon was The War of the Worlds, the classic of alien invasion and interplanetary paranoia by H.G. Wells. Published in serial format by Pearson's Magazine from April 1897 to December of that year, the story originated after the author's relocation to the town of Woking in Surrey County. It was here that Wells also wrote his comic novel The Wheels of Chance, as well as The Invisible Man, which has now been replaced as my favorite Wells invention with this one.

The novel begins on a warm summer's night in June and unfolds from the point of view of an unnamed narrator, an academic in the field of philosophy who lives with his wife in Woking, southwest of London County and bordered on the north by the River Thames. A celestial alignment of Mars, Earth and the sun has generated much interest by members of the Astronomical Exchange, among them Ogilvy, a well-known astronomer and friend of the narrator's.

Ogilvy believes the possibility of life on Mars to be absurd. The narrator isn't so sure about that. Early in the morning, a "falling star" is reported in the skies over Berkshire, Surrey and Middlesex. Ogilvy tracks the descent of what is assumed to be a meteorite to a "common", or public land, near the town of Horsell. Climbing into the sand pit where the object has been buried, Ogilvy discovers a huge cylinder, which he determines to be hollow. He runs to get help and news quickly spreads of "the dead men from Mars".

While Ogilvy and a few other men from the Astronomical Exchange begin to excavate the cylinder, the narrator clings to rational thought, doubting there might actually be any intelligent life inside. He's dispatched to secure fencing needed to hold back the crowds that have begun to converge on the site. The narrator returns at dusk in time to witness the cylinder open. Expecting to see a man, onlookers are aghast at their first glimpse of a Martian in the flesh:

Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon group of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to greater gravitational energy of the earth--above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes--were at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous.

A deputation including Ogilvy approaches the pit with a white flag in an attempt to communicate with the Martians. The party is met with what the narrator refers to as a "heat-ray", a flash of light which leaves the men charred and distorted beyond recognition. The narrator manages to flee the massacre and returns home to his wife. He's confident that the episode may all be a big misunderstanding and trusts that a company of soldiers heading to the site will sort everything out. Meanwhile, a second shooting star lights up the sky.

By afternoon of the next day, guns are heard firing and the narrator observes damage to the spires and chimneys about town. Concluding their home is now in range of the Martian heat-rays, the narrator procures a horse and dog cart from the local pub owner, quickly fills it with valuables and spirits his wife to the town of Leatherhead, where her cousins live. He insists on returning the horse and cart as promised, but upon his return to Woking that night, encounters a pair of giant Martian tripods stepping through the pine trees.

Higher than many houses and dangling steel tentacles, the tripods use their heat-ray to destroy the horse and cart. Through the hail and lightning of the dark, the narrator makes out the shapes of tripods on the march through the English countryside. Seeking shelter at home, he briefly takes in a soldier who initially can only mutter "They wiped us out--simply wiped us out." In the morning, the narrator sets out in search of his wife in the middle of, not a war, but the extermination of mankind.

The War of the Worlds is one of those classic tales that through more than a century of radio, television and film I was sure that I knew. Initially, Wells' typically British stoicism and reserve -- the narrator witnesses his mates microwaved by a Martian death ray and returns home, composes himself and tells the little lady it'll be quite all right in the morning -- kept me removed from the story. It was headed toward two stars and a box checked next to "War of the Worlds, Wells, H.G."

I caught up to the novel at the end of Book One, when the Narrator fishes himself out of the Thames and takes on a companion, a parish priest convinced divine retribution is at hand. The men become unwilling partners, plundering houses for food until a Martian cylinder crashes nearby and traps them. The story became much more thrilling through here, with the danger up close and personal. Instead of running, the narrator is able to study the Martians for the first time, uncovering unpleasant facts of the invader's diet.

Wells' "man on the street" reporting -- adapted by Orson Welles for his infamous 1938 Halloween radio broadcast -- has a unique way of putting the reader right in the middle of an invasion with a remarkable amount of verisimilitude. The heroics exhibited by his narrator are thankfully limited to his ability to stay alive and observe the enemy up close, as well as use his knowledge of the humanities to give what he's experiencing context.

-- Wells cites the names of so many towns and villages that a tourist could probably find their way around London by reading this book.

-- Next to New York, London has been destroyed by more science fiction writers than any other city. Panic takes the heaviest toll in The War of the Worlds. The scenes where the narrator wanders the empty city, certain he's the last survivor, were chilling.

-- The biology and technology of the Martians are ingeniously drawn and truly menacing. I haven't seen an alien in film or television in quite some time that were as designed as well as the Martians.

-- Wells does take an unnecessary detour, shifting focus to the narrator's brother as he flees the siege of London by poisonous black smoke, but even here, Wells' impeccable writing style kept me hooked:

In Sunbury, and at intervals along the road, were dead bodies lying in contorted attitudes, horses as well as men, overturned carts and luggage, all covered thickly with black dust. That pall of cindery powder made me think of what I had read of the destruction of Pompeii. We got to Hampton Court without misadventure, our minds full of strange and unfamiliar appearances, and at Hampton Court our eyes were relieved to find a patch of green that had escaped the suffocating drift.

I found the depictions of how rustic the England of Wells' day truly was to be captivating. Most of the country is connected by rail, but once you left the train stations, you were in the 19th century, with horse cart, carriage or bicycle the best options for travel. Without telephone, television, radio or aircraft to provide news, the reader's imagination is allowed to run amok between pages and fill in the details of the invasion.