The War of the Worlds – HG Wells (1898) 180 pages

I hardly ever read sci-fi and if we discount dystopian fiction then I basically never read it at all. However, I enjoyed HG Wells’ Ann Veronica when I read it back in 2019, and said it had encouraged me to try his science fiction.  I then promptly ignored this impetus for four years 😀

One of the benefits of novellas is that you can dip your reading toe into stories you might not otherwise try, and probably if The War of the Worlds was 500 pages I would never have come to it, despite it being part of my Le Monde’s 100 Books of the Century Reading Challenge. At 180 pages it was much less intimidating, and I really enjoyed it.

It opens:

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter.”

I thought that was a brilliant piece of scene-setting, balancing a huge unknown menace alongside the determinedly everyday. This is something Wells does throughout, firstly in the initial reactions to the invasion:

“I saw my neighbour gardening, chatted with him for a time, and then strolled in to breakfast. It was a most unexceptional morning. My neighbour was of opinion that the troops would be able to capture or to destroy the Martians during the day.”

And secondly in the geography of the novel. It particularly resonated with me as it was places I knew well, having been part of where I grew up. He chooses central and south London, but also a big focus on suburbs like Leatherhead, Chobham, Walton-on-Thames (which aren’t where I grew up but I know them well, being nearby). It seems they haven’t changed massively in 125 years and were still recognisable, the main difference seeming to be cars rather than horse and carts. He couldn’t have picked places any more settled, to throw the extraordinary Martian invasion into the sharpest relief. I thought it was a masterstroke.

He also manages to make the Martians truly terrifying without demonising them, which I wasn’t expecting at all. Despite knowing Wells’ progressive views, as a Victorian novel I expected some sense of moral superiority to be asserted, rather than a challenge to imperialism:

“And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought […] Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?”

If I’ve made this sound a very heavy read, it really isn’t. Wells manages to create a tense narrative while driving his political points home, but at the same time he has a fairly light touch and even some moments of levity:

“At the sight of the sea, Mrs. Elphinstone, in spite of the assurances of her sister-in-law, gave way to panic. She had never been out of England before, she would rather die than trust herself friendless in a foreign country, and so forth. She seemed, poor woman, to imagine that the French and the Martians might prove very similar.”

The War of the Worlds was a ripping yarn, succinctly told, with a social conscience. A great read.