The war of the worlds by H. G. Wells is one of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time.
The way Wells uses the science at the time of the writing of this book to explain how life may possibly be on another planet simply had not been done at that point and still the many sci-fi books that I have read all use fictional places and fantastical theories to why something supernatural may exist.
-“The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140, 000, 000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course.” This quote shows the use of science to explain how life might of began on Mars. As odd as it may sound it’s the reality of The War of the Worlds that makes it such a great piece of fiction.
-The reality of it all makes it more believable an example was when this story was turned into a radio show and inhabitants of earth thought the story of extra-terrestrial creatures coming to ravage and destroy our world was true causing panic and fear the goal of both the novel and radio show as seen in this next quote. “A strange part of the human mind likes to be frightened. When people are frightened, psychologists tell us, the flight-fight reflex is stimulated, adrenaline is pumped into our systems and we become more alert, hearts beat faster, eyes see better, nerves speed messages to and from the brain, muscles tense, and we live at a faster pace.” This quote tells us why H. G. Wells loves to write sci-fi and how exactly it affects human emotions.
This novel may also be one of the greatest sci-fi epics due to the reason that it was the first to suggest another species from another planet invading our own world, at the time this was quite uncommon there had only been theories as there are now of a possibility that extraterrestrials could exist, and here comes H. G. Wells with the War of the Worlds talking about an invasion from these beings from outer space and he was able to make sense of it all.
-“The vision of the gigantic tripods striding across the countryside, leveling everything in their paths with their heat rays and killing with their “Black Smoke,” still has the power to stir our terrified imaginations. What is more, The War of the Worlds was written approximately twenty years before the first use of poison gas in warfare, and today’s scientists still are working on the use of lasers as weapons.” This quote shows how Wells was so far ahead of his time, talking about future weaponry.
- A message was sent to humanity from Wells through the War of the Worlds in this quote that shows a sense of realism that makes the novel one of the greatest sci-fi ever. “In The War of the Worlds he visits upon humanity a catastrophe that is almost Biblical in scope and severity, as if to warn people that there is no hope unless they see the error of their ways and repent.
H. G. also was revolutionary in the way he made the martians a sort of reflection of humanity. This only strengthens my opinion on how the book is a great sci-fi epic, the knowledge of humanity following the foot steps of the martians is truly terrifying which captures the goal of what the novel was trying to accomplish.
-“The Martians, he implies, are what humanity might become. The Martians, mostly brains with tentacles, had perfected their civilization to the point where they had destroyed all forms of life that might threaten it and had evolved so far from their beginnings that they could survive only on blood. They were vampires, but their very vampirism was a sign of their greater “civilization.”
-“If we totally conquer out environment, we may end up totally powerful-and totally vulnerable.” A quote that continues to emphasize Wells’ message of humanity destroying itself. This is how far ahead of time Wells was, able to theorise at the time of little mechanical innovations, medical innovations, and just in general “innovations” Wells presented an idea that humanity would go to far with it’s power and technological advancements in weaponry( both technological and biological).
I cannot stress how much science played in the fantastic story Wells created, the imagination the man must have had especially in the late 1800s. Obviously Wells was intelligent his method of story telling with the impressive vocabulary and obvious scientific knowledge one wonders how much research went into producing the novel. In this quote Wells must have surprised many with the ending to this novel perhaps even for renowned scientists at the time.
-“Martians-dead!-slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth. For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things-taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. ” Not only does this quote show you his strong use of a high vocabulary and scientific knowledge but how he produced an ending so surprising and so strong that no other sci-fi novel that I have heard of could rival it. “ But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many-those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance-our living frames are altogether immune.” This quote sums up the ending of the book with detail on how martians unlike humans never developed an ammunity to bacteria and disease because on mars there are no bacteria left. The fantastic realistic and scientific explanation of why the martians succumb to disease is tremendous and once again ahead of its time.
-Fear plays a big part obviously in War of the Worlds that fear of the unknown, the fear that everything man( or woman) loves being destroyed, the fear of something greater than us. It is this fear that defines great sci-fi War of the Worlds takes all these principles and elevates them to unimaginable heights ( slight exaggeration) in this quote the character is imprisoned and the fear of what the martians will do is looming over him. “THE ARRIVAL OF a second fighting-machine drove us from our peephole into the scullery, for we feared that from his elevation the martian might see down upon us behind our barrier. At a later date we began to feel less in danger of their eyes, for to an eye in the dazzle of the sunlight outside our refuge must have been blank blackness, but at first the slightest suggestion of approach drove us into the scullery in heart-throbbing retreat.”
All in all H. G. Wells crafted a futuristic tale not only just in the way he innovated in the construction of another race from a planet everyone was aware of to the innovative and mostly true theories all of these things came together to make one of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time.
