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Title: The War of the Worlds (Step-Up Classic Chillers) by H. G. Wells, Paul Wenzel, Mary Ann Evans ISBN: 0-679-81047-1 Publisher: Random House Children's Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.01 (160 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Science Fiction At It's Very Best
Comment: This is the book that got me interested in Science-Fiction in the first place, and i've never really read anything else that has drawn me in in quite the same way. It is along with two other H.G. Wells books (The Invisible Man, The Time Machine) quite possibly the blueprints for everything else that followed. For me the only apocolyptic books that came even come close to War Of The Worlds, are The Stand and The Day Of The Triffids.
It works on a number of levels. You can read it as a novel about a Martian Invasion and it works, or you can reads it as a political commentary on the British empire and it still works. It also gives you a pretty good account of life and attitudes in England a century ago.
Quite simply in my humble opinion it is the best piece of literature written in the last 150 years. Now if only Hollywood would make a proper adaption of it. One set in England in the 1890's and with proper tripod fighting machines.
Rating: 4
Summary: Martians are attacking the Earth!
Comment: "No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own...." Thus begins The War of the Worlds, written by science-fiction mastermind H. G. Wells, who brought you other incredible novels, such as The Time Machine.
This suspenseful story of Martians invading Earth is full of surprises. The narrator tells of his encounters with the powerful Martians and their stunning technologically advanced weapons and machines, which range from iron-melting heat rays to death serving war machines.
This novel has its ups and downs. One down is that the author sometimes describes the surroundings too much. But, the book does have the eerieness of a suspenseful book, keeping you on the edge of your seat, wondering what will happen next. Will mankind survive? Will the invading Martians take over the Earth? Will the Martians destroy the Earth? Find out when you read the spectacular book, The War of the Worlds.
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 Classics Pub. Date: 15 December, 1992 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne ISBN: 0812550927 Publisher: Tor Classics Pub. Date: 15 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 USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1965 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells ISBN: 0553214322 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells ISBN: 0486270718 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 05 February, 1992 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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