In 1938 a radio broadcast describing the invasion of earth by Martians presented as a news bulletin by narrator Orson Welles led to widespread panic by listeners who believed actual events were taking place. In fact, the broadcast was a close adaptation of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Public interest in the possibility of intelligent life on Mars had first been aroused by the discovery of canals in 1877. On August 2, 1894 the British journal Nature reported that French astronomers had observed a light emanating from the edges of the disk of Mars “in the region of the planet not illuminated by the sun at the time of the observation”, prompting speculation that inhabitants of the planet were attempting to send signals at a time when the orbits of the planets were close and intensifying interest in alien encounters.

Book 1 – The Coming of the Martians begins with a fictionalized account of this observation. In short order a cylindrical object lands in Surrey. The narrator, an author with a philosophical bent who is never named, is among the first to encounter the “intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous” Martians, and proceeds to document the entire invasion. The human artillery is no match for the Martian heat-rays, black smoke, and three-legged Tripod fighting machines. Opposition is incinerated, millions of Londoners are evacuated and the Martians inherit the devastated landscape.

Book 2 – The Earth Under The Martians finds the narrator scavenging for food when he encounter Martians harvesting humans, presumably for nourishment. The arrival of the fifth Martian cylinder demolishes his hideaway. After some weeks in hiding he escapes to a barren West London where he finds the invaders dying from infections for which they have no resistance just in the nick of time.

The War of the Worlds was appeared in serial form in Pearson’s Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan in the United States in 1897 before publication in book form in 1898. In many ways it created the formula for alien invasion stories and can be seen in direct descendants such E.T. and Close Encounters. Always popular, the book has never gone out of print and continues to influence the genre.

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