The War of the Worlds is rather impressive given what science was understood at the time — Wells had only a rudimentary understanding of rocketry, and the iconic Martian tripods are not really the most sensible constructs, but revolutionary new ideas like the germ theory of disease and the theory of evolution are handled well, and prescient descriptions of lasers and poison gas make this truly science fiction to this day.
The War of the Worlds is a grim and brutal invasion story. While Wells did not describe the Martian atrocities in graphic detail, post-invasion London as described by the first-person narrator is a charnel house, then an empty, post-apocalyptic landscape. These images — of London devastated, of the Martian red weed choking out all terrestrial vegetation, of hundred-foot tall tripods wading up the Thames and destroying everything in their path with heat rays — make the novel as much a horror story as a science fiction adventure.
Indeed, the narrator is rather passive, only scurrying about in the shadows of the Martians, trying to survive and find his wife as the invaders overrun England until being felled by terrestrial microbes. His time spent with other survivors — the hapless curate, the ambitious but ineffective artilleryman — makes the novel more than just a war story. Wells focuses on human psychology and society as much as the aliens.
In the century-plus since it was published, The War of the Worlds remains a landmark, inspiration for countless imitators from Independence Day to John Christopher's Tripods. There have been film and radio versions — the most famous of all being Orson Welles' 1938 radio drama that panicked America.
There have also been lesser known adaptations, like comic books, TV series, and perhaps my favorite of all, a musical!
Wells' prose is descriptive but spare, and of course the story is dated now, but The War of the Worlds is still capable of evoking fears of alien invasions and stirring imaginative ideas about the inhabitants of Mars. Have there been better stories in the genre written since then? Yes, but all of them owe their existence to the original. Including my own.