The war of the worlds

But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited. . . . Are we or they Lords of the World....

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being...

The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our...

The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety their mathematical...

A singularly appropriate phrase it proved. Yet the next day there was nothing of this in the papers...

Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of light, three telescopic stars...

He was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars, and scoffed at the vulgar idea...

One night the first missile then could scarcely have been 10,000,000 miles away I went for a walk...

But very early in the morning poor Ogilvy, who had seen the shooting star and who was persuaded...

Then suddenly he noticed with a start that some of the grey clinker, the ashy incrustation that...

The thought of the confined creature was so dreadful to him that he forgot the heat and went...

By eight oclock a number of boys and unemployed men had already started for the common to see the...

Among these were a couple of cyclists, a jobbing gardener I employed sometimes, a girl carrying a...

There were half a dozen flys or more from the Woking station standing in the road by the sand pits,...

A large portion of the cylinder had been uncovered, though its lower end was still embedded. As...

When I returned to the common the sun was setting. Scattered groups were hurrying from the...

A sudden chill came over me. There was a loud shriek from a woman behind. I half turned, keeping my...

Suddenly the monster vanished. It had toppled over the brim of the cylinder and fallen into the...

After the glimpse I had had of the Martians emerging from the cylinder in which they had come to...

Did you see a man in the pit. I said; but he made no answer to that. We became silent, and stood...

Then I saw some cabmen and others had walked boldly into the sand pits, and heard the clatter of...

This smoke or flame, perhaps, would be the better word for it was so bright that the deep blue sky...

I stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death leaping from man to man in that little...

The undulating common seemed now dark almost to blackness, except where its roadways lay grey and...

I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being played with, that presently, when I...

As these folks came out by twos and threes upon the open, they found little knots of people talking...

But that crowd of people had a far narrower escape than mine. Only the fact that a hummock of...

For my own part, I remember nothing of my flight except the stress of blundering against trees and...

I rose and walked unsteadily up the steep incline of the bridge. My mind was blank wonder. My...

But the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and the swift death flying yonder, not...

I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that Ogilvy had told me of the impossibility of...

The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive powers in a state of erethism....

Even within the five mile circle the great majority of people were inert. I have already described...

A curious crowd lingered restlessly, people coming and going but the crowd remaining, both on the...

A few seconds after midnight the crowd in the Chertsey road, Woking, saw a star fall from heaven...

I saw my neighbour gardening, chatted with him for a time, and then strolled in to breakfast. It...

After breakfast, instead of working, I decided to walk down towards the common. Under the railway...

I must confess the sight of all this armament, all this preparation, greatly excited me. My...

Down the hill I saw a bevy of hussars ride under the railway bridge; three galloped through the...

He turned, stared, bawled something about crawling out in a thing like a dish cover, and ran on to...

Leatherhead is about twelve miles from Maybury Hill. The scent of hay was in the air through the...

It was nearly eleven when I started to return. The night was unexpectedly dark; to me, walking out...

From Ripley until I came through Pyrford I was in the valley of the Wey, and the red glare was...

At first I regarded little but the road before me, and then abruptly my attention was arrested by...

I crawled out almost immediately, and crouched, my feet still in the water, under a clump of furze....

For some minutes I lay there in the rain and darkness watching, by the intermittent light, these...

If I had fully realised the meaning of all the things I had seen I should have immediately worked...

Near the top I stumbled upon something soft, and, by a flash of lightning, saw between my feet a...

Down the road towards Maybury Bridge there were voices and the sound of feet, but I had not the...

The thunderstorm had passed. The towers of the Oriental College and the pine trees about it had...

Between these three main centres of light the houses, the train, and the burning county towards...

The storm had left the sky clear, and over the smoke of the burning land the little fading pinpoint...

Later this shield staggered up on tripod legs and became the first of the fighting machines I had...

In a few minutes there was, so far as the soldier could see, not a living thing left upon the...

That was the story I got from him, bit by bit. He grew calmer telling me and trying to make me see...

Between us and Leatherhead, however, lay the third cylinder, with its guarding giants. Had I been...

We went down the lane, by the body of the man in black, sodden now from the overnight hail, and...

Well, said the lieutenant, I suppose its my business to see it too. Look here to the artilleryman...

Several farm waggons and carts were moving creakily along the road to Addlestone, and suddenly...

No one in Weybridge could tell us where the headquarters were established; the whole place was in...

Here we found an excited and noisy crowd of fugitives. As yet the flight had not grown to a panic,...

The fighting was beginning. Almost immediately unseen batteries across the river to our right,...

Then, advancing obliquely towards us, came a fifth. Their armoured bodies glittered in the sun as...

In another moment it was on the bank, and in a stride wading halfway across. The knees of its...

A violent explosion shook the air, and a spout of water, steam, mud, and shattered metal shot far...

My attention was diverted from this death flurry by a furious yelling, like that of the thing...

The air was full of sound, a deafening and confusing conflict of noises the clangorous din of the...

In another moment the huge wave, well nigh at the boiling point had rushed upon me. I screamed...

But they were in no hurry. Cylinder followed cylinder on its interplanetary flight; every twenty...

I saw an abandoned boat, very small and remote, drifting down stream; and throwing off the most of...

I do not clearly remember the arrival of the curate, so that probably I dozed. I became aware of...

This must be the beginning of the end, he said, interrupting me. The end. The great and terrible...

From beyond the low hills across the water came the dull resonance of distant guns and a remote...

Of course all the students in the crammers biology class, to which my brother went that day, were...

I have read, in another account of these events, that on Sunday morning all London was electrified...

My brother went to church at the Foundling Hospital in the morning, still in ignorance of what had...

Theres hosts of people driving into Kingston in traps and carts and things, with boxes of valuables...

The church bells were ringing for evensong, and a squad of Salvation Army lassies came singing down...

They were described as vast spiderlike machines, nearly a hundred feet high, capable of the speed...

The authorities had reason to suppose, from the size of the cylinders, that at the outside there...

Going on along the Strand to Trafalgar Square, the paper in his hand, my brother saw some of the...

I come from Byfleet, he said; a man on a bicycle came through the place in the early morning, and...

There were one or two cartloads of refugees passing along Oxford Street, and several in the...

The sound of drumming and trumpeting came from the Albany Street Barracks, and every church within...

And all about him in the rooms below, in the houses on each side and across the road, and behind in...

The bells of the neighbouring church made a jangling tumult, a cart carelessly driven smashed, amid...

It was this howling and firing of the guns at Ripley and St. Georges Hill that we had heard at...

After this it would seem that the three took counsel together and halted, and the scouts who were...

At this sight the curate cried faintly in his throat, and began running; but I knew it was no good...

No doubt the thought that was uppermost in a thousand of those vigilant minds, even as it was...

Every moment I expected the fire of some hidden battery to spring upon him; but the evening calm...

It was heavy, this vapour, heavier than the densest smoke, so that, after the first tumultuous...

But that was at Street Cobham, where the black vapour was allowed to remain until it sank of its...

So, setting about it as methodically as men might smoke out a wasps nest, the Martians spread this...

One has to imagine, as well as one may, the fate of those batteries towards Esher, waiting so...

All the railway lines north of the Thames and the South Eastern people at Cannon Street had been...

So he got out of the fury of the panic, and, skirting the Edgware Road, reached Edgware about...

It was perhaps a vague idea of making his way to Chelmsford, where some friends of his lived, that...

It was no time for pugilistic chivalry and my brother laid him quiet with a kick, and gripped the...

He learned they were the wife and the younger sister of a surgeon living at Stanmore, who had come...

She explained that they had as much as thirty pounds in gold, besides a five pound note, and...

As my brothers party went on towards the crossroads to the south of Barnet they saw a woman...

It was like riding into the smoke of a fire to approach the meeting point of the lane and road; the...

The carts and carriages crowded close upon one another, making little way for those swifter and...

There were sad, haggard women tramping by, well dressed, with children that cried and stumbled,...

A little old man, with a grey military moustache and a filthy black frock coat, limped out and sat...

So soon as the cab had passed, he flung himself, with both hands open, upon the heap of coins, and...

There was a smash as the pole of a carriage crashed into the cart that the man on horseback...

For the second time that day this girl proved her quality. To force their way into the torrent of...

Near this place they halted for the rest of the afternoon, for the violence of the day had already...

And beyond, over the blue hills that rise southward of the river, the glittering Martians went to...

That day the scattered multitudes began to realise the urgent need of provisions. As they grew...

People were watching for Martians here from the church towers. My brother, very luckily for him as...

At the sight of the sea, Mrs. Elphinstone, in spite of the assurances of her sister in law, gave...

There were already a couple of score of passengers aboard, some of whom had expended their last...

It was the first Martian my brother had seen, and he stood, more amazed than terrified, watching...

A douche of spray blinded my brother for a moment. When his eyes were clear again he saw the...

They saw the gaunt figures separating and rising out of the water as they retreated shoreward, and...

She was alive still; the steering gear, it seems, was intact and her engines working. She headed...

Then suddenly out of the golden haze of the sunset came the vibration of guns, and a form of black...

My mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife. I figured her at Leatherhead, terrified, in danger,...

For a time we did not see how this change affected our position, save that we were relieved of our...

Away across the road the woods beyond Ham and Petersham were still afire. Twickenham was uninjured...

But my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not let me rest, and in the twilight I ventured out...

I suppose it was nearly eleven oclock before we gathered courage to start again, no longer...

We then crossed to a place where the road turns towards Mortlake. Here there stood a white house...

We both sat quite silent, so that we could scarcely hear each other breathing. Everything seemed...

The window had been burst in by a mass of garden mould, which flowed over the table upon which we...

At last I found myself awake and very hungry. I am inclined to believe we must have spent the...

I touched the curates leg, and he started so violently that a mass of plaster went sliding down...

The mechanism it certainly was that held my attention first. It was one of those complicated...

At first, I say, the handling machine did not impress me as a machine, but as a crablike creature...

And this was the sum of the Martian organs. Strange as it may seem to a human being, all the...

And while I am engaged in this description, I may add in this place certain further details which,...

In man, in all the higher terrestrial animals, such a method of increase has disappeared; but even...

The last salient point in which the systems of these creatures differed from ours was in what one...

The Martians wore no clothing. Their conceptions of ornament and decorum were necessarily different...

The arrival of a second fighting machine drove us from our peephole into the scullery, for we...

It is disagreeable for me to recall and write these things, but I set them down that my story may...

The contrast between the swift and complex movements of these contrivances and the inert panting...

I slid down the rubbish, struggled to my feet, clapped my hands over my ears, and bolted into the...

It says much for the impression the Martians had made upon me that at first I entertained little or...

For a few minutes there was a tussle. The bottle struck the floor and broke, and I desisted and...

It is just, O God. he would say, over and over again. It is just. On me and mine be the punishment...

I put out my hand and felt the meat chopper hanging to the wall. In a flash I was after him. I was...

Something was moving to and fro there, very quietly; every now and then it tapped against the wall,...

In the darkness I could just see the thing like an elephants trunk more than anything else waving...

It came into the scullery no more; but I lay all the tenth day in the close darkness, buried among...

On the twelfth day my throat was so painful that, taking the chance of alarming the Martians, I...

It was early on the fifteenth day that I heard a curious, familiar sequence of sounds in the...