Terug The War of the Worlds (1898)
by
Herbert George Wells
He is regarded as the first writer of science fiction in England. He wrote more than a hundred books, which can be divided into three groups. First there are the scientific romances, on which his fame is mainly based. For example ‘The Time Machine’, ‘The invisible man’ and ‘The War in the Air’.Then come the novels of character and humour. For example ‘Kipps’ and ‘The History of Mr Polly’. The last group consists didactical works. For example ‘Ann Veronica’.
Information about the book
The book is about the invasion of earth by Martians. To modern readers it seems to be primitive, but if you take into consideration that the book was written a hundred years ago, you may look at it in a different way.
Nowadays it isn't special to read about invasions by aliens, but in the 19th century it was. You must admire Wells' inventiveness, because he was the one who introduced science fiction to England. This is why ‘The War of the Worlds’ is such an important book.
Contents
The Cylinder Unscrews
The first fragment is about the first landing of a missile near London. Nobody knows where it came from and they are eager to know. A lot of people are standing around the pit, waiting to see what has exactly come down. A man has fallen into the pit and was trying to scramble out of it. Then all of a sudden the cillinder moves and the top falls off: Martians are coming out of it!!!
They look really ugly and disgusting. In panic everybody begins to run from the pit and hide behind bushes, trees, in ditches etc. About a hundred people or more are now staring hard at a few heaps of sand from their hiding-places. Something appears at the edge of the pit, it is the man who had fallen in. He is almost out of the pit when suddenly he disappears again with a faint shriek. Now everything is very quiet again.
The Death of the Curate
The narrator is on his way to London when he meets a curate. They spend the night in a house, which is partially destroyed when the fifth cillinder comes down nearby. The narrator and the curate are trapped, because the Martians have built up their camp right next to their house. The curate who had already had a hard time dealing with the invasion, begins to lose his mind after a few days imprisonment. On the sixth day of the imprisonment the narrator catches the curate while drinking a bottle of burgundy. After this he tells the curate of his determination to begin a discipline and so he divides the food into rations to last them ten days. The curate doesn't agree with this and makes several attacks on the food. Besides this he keeps babbling noisily to himself as well.
The narrator thinks that the weakness and insanity of the curate has warmed him, braced him and kept him a sane man.
On the eighth day the curate begins to talk aloud. He keeps raising his voice louder and louder, so the only thing the narrator can do to get him silent is to smack him on the head with the butt of a meatchopper. The curate falls unconsciously on the floor, but it is too late. A Martian appears and drags the curate across the floor towards him with his tentacles. The Martian investigates the curate's head and discovers the presence of another human by the mark from the blow the narrator had given him. The Martian searches for the narrator, who has hidden in the coal-cellar, but does not find him.
What is the relation between the fragment and the book
The invasion is of course a very important happening in the book, because without an invasion there would be no story. Thanks to the curate the narrator keeps his sanity and survives.
My own opinion
When I was reading the fragments I realised that the appearance of the Martians is used in a lot of other books and movies. These books and movies are all dated after 1898, so you can say that ‘The War of the Worlds’ was an example for many other writers. I like to read science fiction stories.
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