War of the worlds

In six images

The Eve of the War

The narrator's lab

24 Mar 2026

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched, yet across the gulf of space, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

The arrival

Horshall Common

24 Mar 2026

Then came the night of the first falling star.

Ogilvy, the astronomer said it was unlikely that organic evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets. “The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one,” he said.

Attack at Dawn

The heat ray

24 Mar 2026

It was as if some invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame and momentarily turned to fire.

London

Dense Black Smoke

24 Mar 2026

Dense black smoke was leaping up to mingle with the steam from the river, and as the Heat-Ray went to and fro over London its impact was marked by flashes of incandescent white, that gave place at once to a smoky dance of lurid flames.

Dead London

The red weed clambered among the ruins

24 Mar 2026

The red weed clambered among the ruins, writhing to get above in the dimness. Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming. But while that voice sounded the solitude, the desolation, had been endurable; by virtue of it London had still seemed alive, and the sense of life had upheld.

Victory

Directly these invaders arrived, our microscopic allies began ...

24 Mar 2026

Directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow, and they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.