Who’s read it ? The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
By bookmark_rough
I really hope everyone
Reader discussion: The War of the Worlds
Public reader discussion about The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.
[Scheduled/Evergreen] The War of the Worlds (chapters 10-15 of book 1)
By bisonsun
Hi everyone, welcome to the second half of the discussion for The War of the Worlds. We’re on chapters 10-15 of book 1 today, and I added a chapter recap in case anyone wanted a quick refresher. Chapter 10, In the Storm: the narrator has made it to Leatherhead, and the fire has already stopped by then. He gets there safely, and he’s pretty eager to be around when the Martians get wiped out. He leaves his wife where he thinks she’ll be safe and heads back to return the horse to the innkeeper. On the way back he sees the third falling star come down during a thunderstorm, and then the Thing appears, this huge tripod thing taller than the trees. Another one shows up too. In his panic he tips over the dogcart and the horse dies with a broken neck. He crouches down while the Things go past. After that he heads toward home and finds the landlord’s dead body. Chapter 11, At the Window: back home, he notices the view from his study has already changed and there are giant black shapes moving overhead while the countryside burns underneath them. As he’s watching, an artillery driver shows up looking for somewhere safe and bringing news. The news is basically that things are not going well for the humans. Chapter 12, What I Saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton: they decide the house isn’t safe anymore. At first the narrator wants to go get his wife and take her farther away from the destruction, but the artillery driver talks him into coming with him instead and not making his wife a widow. They run into soldiers who haven’t seen the Martians yet and don’t really believe what they’re being told. They have a hard time finding the military headquarters. There are people hiding, people leaving town, and more soldiers coming in to fight. A lot of the people heading out still think the Martians will end up losing. By the Thames, the fighting starts and they hear the first shots. Then the Martians arrive and everyone panics, crashing into each other while trying to run. The narrator thinks to hide from the heat ray in the water, and some others do the same. When he comes up for air, he sees one of the Things get decapitated, which is at least a win for the humans for a second, even though everything after that gets worse fast. Four more come after it in revenge, and one of them carries him away right past the narrator, who is lying on the gravel burned from the boiling water but still somehow alive. Chapter 13, How I Fell in with the Curate: the military is starting to understand how serious the Martians are, and they’re moving guns around and switching to defense. Meanwhile the Martians are collecting the new arrivals and taking them to headquarters. While all that’s going on, the narrator finds an abandoned boat and keeps going down the river, constantly looking behind him. He’s exhausted, burned, and thirsty, and eventually he ends up on the banks of Middlesex and falls asleep. When he wakes up, he’s with a curate who’s been drifting in and out of consciousness and asking for water. The curate keeps asking what sins people must have committed to deserve this and thinks it’s the end of everything. The narrator tries to calm him down and tells him to get himself together. Chapter 14, In London: here we find out the narrator’s younger brother was in London as a medical student when the Martians came. He thinks he’s probably fine since the Thing is still a couple miles away from his house, and he wants to go see the Things before they’re destroyed, but the trains aren’t running. The narrator goes into how slowly London really understood what was happening. At first people don’t fully get it, and it mostly shows up in broken communications and trains stopping. A crowd gathers at the station until police break it up. Once the news really hits, it takes over the newspapers, and the brother starts worrying about his own safety. Then in the middle of the night London gets woken up by door knockers warning about the aliens. Black smoke is seen, the papers say the aliens are using rockets that give off black poisonous vapors, and everyone is trying to get out. Chapter 15, What Had Happened in Surrey: we get more about what the Martians are doing, and also that some of the “military” setups are really just volunteers who don’t stand much of a chance against the invaders. At St. George’s Hill, the gunners seem like they might do better at first, but once they actually start getting somewhere on one of the Martians, it sounds an alarm to call the others in. Most of the gunners are taken out by the heat ray. After that the Martians stay grouped together until the others arrive with black canisters. Later, the narrator and the curate see them again while hiding in brambles in a ditch by the road. The Martians fire something into the sky, and neither of them understands it. The narrator is frustrated that the human gunners don’t shoot at the Martian as it walks off. The things they launched later turn out to be a heavy black vapor that spreads over the area. Some time after that, the 4th cylinder lands on Earth. The Martians seem to have learned from what happened at St. George’s Hill and start using the vapor on the gunners before they can even get close. The human defense just falls apart into fear and mess. Feel free to jump in on any of the questions below, skip them, answer all of them, or add your own thoughts and questions too.
War of the worlds
By looksbridge
Really enjoyed the audiobook. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but Jeff Wayne’s *The War of the Worlds*—the musical drama version—ended up being great to listen to. You can find it on Audible, too.
The War of the World tv shows questions
By soft_grace2
Do any of the War of the Worlds TV shows actually wrap up with a real ending? And are any of them worth watching? Also, do they connect to each other at all?
The Sleeper Awakes by H. G. WELLS
By early_cat
Rating: 3.5/5 When the Sleeper Wakes is basically about a guy who falls asleep and then wakes up over 200 years later, only to find out his bank money has basically compounded into “richest man in the world” territory. I liked the whole Victorian guy suddenly dropped into a totally different reality thing, and it kept pulling me in. I did have moments where the descriptions were hard to picture, but overall it does a good job pointing out how ugly unchecked capitalism can get. Graham’s seeing people with power “fix” homelessness in the worst way—by using forced labor and making life even harder for anyone already struggling. And the poor get mocked for how they look, which always felt extra cruel, especially since they’re not exactly able to buy nice clothes when they can barely make it day to day. Then there’s this revolutionary leader Graham runs into who, once he actually gets power, just turns around and recreates the same oppressive system he supposedly wanted to tear down. It makes the whole corruption/power cycle feel pretty bleak. The book also digs into what industrialization really does to people—how society gets sorted into layers and how easily humans get treated like they don’t matter. I will say, like Wells admitted, parts of it—mostly near the end—feel rushed. And that ending really sticks with me. Is it actually a win, or is it just another kind of loss? I kind of like that it stays ambiguous, though. If the people who already have everything keep chasing more wealth and power, what chance do the poor even have to come out on top?
[Wells' War of the Worlds] Who were the humanoid creatures that the Martians used as food supply?
By LuckyBowl1985
I noticed the original War of the Worlds just kind of brushes past it—like the Martians apparently showed up with some kind of food supply, and the narrator also describes them as these sort of flimsy two-legged things with big eyes and bulbous heads. But I can’t tell if those are supposed to be other Martians or just some kind of different group. And then later it says the Martians are now apparently concentrating on Venus—so are these creatures coming from there too?
Thoughts on The War of the Worlds
By window_verse
Honestly, it’s kind of wild how much impact this book has had. It’s not just “aliens show up,” it’s also this jab at colonial stuff—like the Martians basically come in and destroy everything, and then they end up getting wiped out by diseases that were already part of the world. The comparison they make to what Europeans did to Tasmania/Tasmanians feels really harsh, but it also kind of makes the whole thing land differently. I also can’t stop noticing how often disease shows up in books from this era. It was such a real, constant threat back then. So when the Martians die from something terrestrial, it feels like it’s pointing at this stubborn human resilience—like we fought them as hard as we could and somehow we were still “better” in the end because of what we’d already lived through. It’s an early alien invasion story but it reads super modern in a bunch of ways. My favorite parts were the “the Martians know how to use doors” line, and the whole bit about them not using wheels. And honestly, the biggest weapon humanity has is just a navy warship, which is such a specific choice. I loved the whole giant cylinder thing too—like they have to be unscrewed from the inside, and it almost feels like an early UFO-ish idea. The Martians themselves are fun to picture: big body, tentacles, huge eyes, beaks, and the tripods with the heat rays. The whole destruction sequences are great to visualize, and I was especially thrown by the red plants showing up after the cylinders crash. It reminded me of that “A Quiet Place Year One” movie thing where crashing objects bring some growing fungus that starts taking over. I know it’s not the same setup, but the vibe felt similar. Overall, I really enjoyed the book, and I’m glad it’s still recognized as one of the first big alien invasion stories. You can totally see its influence everywhere after that, and it gave me a better perspective on why it caught on so hard.