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Title: The War of the Worlds (Dover Children's Thrift Classics) by Robert Blaisdell, John Green, H. G. Wells ISBN: 0-486-40552-4 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $1.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.01 (160 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Read the book before you see the movie!
Comment: This novel is another classic of vintage science fiction. H.G. Wells has a knack for creating situations and characters that literally jump off the pages at you; but only if you haven't polluted your mind with the images from the movie based on the novel. The War of the Worlds is a very entertaining book with a lot of action. It is perhaps the most entertaining of Wells' works, but it lacks the social insight you find in The Island of Dr. Moreau and The Time Machine. What it does give you, though, is a reminder that despite mankind's great achievements, we are all still very vulnerable! (This point is driven home rather bluntly at the end of the novel with the fate of the alien invaders - but I can't reveal it here without giving away too much) This is a great work that I recommend for any true fan of science fiction. Enjoy!
Rating: 4
Summary: Great Classic Story, Desiring More Character Development
Comment: "The War of the Worlds" is a gripping sci-fi classic detailing the devastation of London and environs during a Martian invasion, told in the past tense by an unnamed narrator (likely Wells himself) who luckily has lived to tell the story. Wells' late 19th century conceptualization of the Heat-Ray (laser gun), Black Smoke (chemical warfare) and Secret of Flying (airplanes) correctly anticipates the direction of 20th century military technology. However, his descriptions of the brain-strong, emotion-free Martians, with their intricate though wheel-less machines and rapid-growth red creeper plants, today remain only imaginary, since prospects of extant advanced life on Mars are, by modern scientific judgment, whilst conceivable, strikingly remote.
Wells' depiction of how humans commonly respond in disaster situations--initial nonchalance and controlled denial, followed by convulsive panic in the face of imminent death--is superb. Further, the juxtaposition of the narrator's courageous realism alongside the curate's wimpy fatalism and the artilleryman's dreamy idealism elevates the plot-oriented adventure to a stimulating, higher philosophical level.
The "good guy wins" story remains suspenseful until the end because the means of victory (I'll just say "by power of nature," to avoid revealing too much) is intriguing and believable. Regarding the title of the book, since the confrontation is limited geographically and involves a very restricted number of Martian invaders within the span of only a few weeks, a less grandiose title along the lines of "Invasion of the Martians" would be more true to the actual unfolding of events.
The main weakness of the book as a literary work is the superficial development of the human relationships between key characters. The narrator's brother seems to be mostly a literary device used by the author to expose the reader to events outside of the narrator's immediate experience. Most importantly, the narrator's relationship to his wife begs further development, especially since she is the emotional driving force behind the narrator's lonely resolve to persevere through his struggles and, ultimately, return to her side.
Rating: 4
Summary: Hard to hate creatures with such cool toys
Comment: I don't know if H.G. Wells can take all the credit for pioneering modern science fiction, but his 1898 novel "The War of the Worlds" is certainly a revolutionary stroke, apparently the first conception of what a hostile extraterrestrial invasion would be like. The invaders here are Martians, who, as Wells describes, are superevolved beyond humans, having had to sharpen their intelligence and develop superior technology in order to survive their planet's cold climate. Looking with jealousy towards their larger, warmer sunward planetary neighbor, they have decided to take over Earth, where they can build a new civilization.
Meanwhile on Earth, astronomers, their telescopes pointed towards Mars, notice strange luminous flashes on the surface of the red planet; these, it can be surmised, are the Martians launching their interplanetary spacecrafts towards their target. A few months later the crafts land in the English countryside one at a time; it turns out the Martians have traveled in gigantic cylinders which contain all their equipment, including their land vehicles--tall walking tripods with rotating control centers that look like hooded human heads--which evidently are stored in parts and need to be assembled. These machines have weapons that deploy "Heat-Rays" which roast anything on contact and dense black powder which poisons the air and water. With these undeniably cool toys, the Martians have no problems advancing towards London and decimating every living thing in their path.
Undiplomatic and incommunicative with earthlings, the Martians are cold-blooded killers with possibly the ultimate goal of enslaving the human species for labor in their colonies. The Martian beings themselves are described as vaguely globular, tentacular monsters that are mostly brain and little else, creatures seemingly borrowed from the distant future of Wells's imagination in "The Time Machine." What I found most original and bizarre about them was Wells's description of their machinery, which does not use wheels or any kind of angular mechanism, but rather complex systems of sliding parts on curved surfaces--in other words, their mechanisms approximate biomechanisms. Their cleverness is indeed formidable, but their information about Earth is lacking in one important area which causes their downfall.
The human characters in the novel are hardly worth mentioning, especially the narrator, which is probably why he doesn't have a name; he is used simply as an eyewitness to relate the events. The Martians and their incredible machines were the only things that really drew my interest because Wells is at his best when he invokes the horror of the unknown rather than the realities of human behavior. Upon its first appearance, this novel must have struck many Victorians as distastefully grotesque, the idea of a cataclysmic war (at the dawn of the century that invented the cataclysmic war) the willful nightmare of a madman; but Wells was a visionary if not the most elegant writer, and visionaries sometimes shock us.
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Title: The Time Machine by H. G. Wells ISBN: 0812505042 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 1995 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne ISBN: 0812550927 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne ISBN: 0140022651 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1965 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: The Island of Dr. Moreau (Bantam Classics) by H.G. WELLS ISBN: 0553214322 Publisher: Bantam Classics Pub. Date: 01 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: The Invisible Man (Dover Thrift Editions) by H. G. Wells ISBN: 0486270718 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 February, 1992 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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