War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells

"No one would have believed in the early years of the 21st century that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns, they observed and studied, the way a man with a microscope might scrutinize the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, men went to and fro about the globe, confident of our empire over this world. Yet across the gulf of space, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our planet with envious eyes and slowly, and surely, drew their plans against us..." The War Of The worlds is one of the most famous ...

After watching the awful Tom Cruise film last year, I promised myself I would read this. Or re-read it? I wasn’t really sure if I’d ever read it at all. So much of the story is familiar, and notorious, of course, from the panic caused by Orson Welles’ radio version in 1938. So a book, radio play and blockbuster film – it certainly seems to appeal to successive generations. The first thing that struck me was how short it was: 180 pages in a small Penguin paperback edition. Little more than a short story, really. Technically, I guess that given its restricted focus of plot, characters and timescale it is a novella, although this format is not common in ...

It was 1986 when I first heard Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds - one hundred years exactly since Wells wrote the novel. I was ten years old, and Richard Burton's opening monologue stuck deeply into my brain. The unfolding plot combined with the eerie music to have a profound effect on me - I had nightmares, I couldn't listen to it if I was on my own and I absolutely had to read the novel. Since then, it's one of only a handful of books I've read several times, and I still have the same battered copy twenty years later. To feel passionate and enthusiastic about H.G. Wells' novel is easy but I don't want my over-excitement to lead to a ...