The War of the Worlds
By H. G. Wells
Cover: Martian fighting-machine over the river (original drawing for La Guerre des mondes, 1906) by Henrique Alvim Correa (1876-1910) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells about an attempted invasion of Earth by beings from the planet Mars with much greater intelligence and more advanced weapons than humans. The Martians intend to eliminate mankind and conquer Earth because their own older and smaller world has reached the "last stage of exhaustion". It was written between 1895 and 1897, and serialised in Pearson's Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US in 1897. The full novel was first published in hardcover in 1898 by William Heinemann.
Summary source: Wikipedia: The War of the Worlds · CC BY-SA 4.0
Table of contents
- 1: The Eve of the War
- 2: The Falling Star
- 3: On Horsell Common
- 4: The Cylinder Opens
- 5: The Heat-Ray
- 6: The Heat-Ray in the Chobham Road
- 7: How I Reached Home
- 8: Friday Night
- 9: The Fighting Begins
- 10: In the Storm
- 11: At the Window
- 12: What I Saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton
- 13: How I Fell in with the Curate
- 14: In London
- 15: What Had Happened in Surrey
- 16: The Exodus from London
- 17: The “Thunder Child”
- 18: Under Foot
- 19: What We Saw from the Ruined House
- 20: The Days of Imprisonment
- 21: The Death of the Curate
- 22: The Stillness
- 23: The Work of Fifteen Days
- 24: The Man on Putney Hill
- 25: Dead London
- 26: Chapter 26
- 27: The Epilogue