H. G. Wells' science fiction novel The War of the Worlds was initially serialized in 1897 by Pearson's Magazine in the United Kingdom and Cosmopolitan magazine in the United States. The novel was first published in hardback in 1898 by London publisher William Heinemann. It is one of the oldest stories to portray a struggle between humans and an extraterrestrial species, having been written between 1895 and 1897. As southern England is overrun by Martians, the novel tells the story of an unidentified protagonist in Surrey and his younger brother in London. The novel has received a lot of attention and is one of the most discussed works in the science fiction genre.
The plot is based on invading literature from the historical period. The work has been read in a variety of ways as a critique of Darwinian theory, British empire, and Victorian superstitions, phobias, and biases in general. The story, according to Wells, developed from a talk with his brother Frank concerning the British's disastrous effect on indigenous Tasmanians. What would happen if Martians did to Britain what the British had done to Tasmanians, he wondered? It was classified as a scientific romance at the time of publishing, similar to Wells' earlier work The Time Machine.
The War of the Worlds has spawned a half-dozen feature films, radio dramas, a record album, many comic book adaptations, a number of television shows, and sequels or parallel works by other authors, and has never been out of print. It was most famously dramatized in a 1938 radio broadcast directed by and starring Orson Welles, which purportedly created widespread terror among listeners who were unaware that the Martian invasion was a hoax.
