Escaping the Martians
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
In this blog, I’m going to review a classic sci-fi book written by H.G. Wells called “War of the Worlds”. I read this novel about 3 years ago for the first time, and even though this is one of the few books that both my parents like, I thought it was very boring back then. Recently, my parents convinced me to give it another try, and this time I loved it. I should have known I would feel differently this time since I have reviewed and loved other H.G. Wells books, including The Time Machine. In the book, the main character (that oddly enough was never given a name) was looking out of his window one night and saw what looked like a disk with a blaze of light coming out of it, shining brightly in the night sky. Many people around him thought it might be a spaceship. A few nights later, a green, hissing shooting star smashed into the earth nearby and the people at the crash site saw a small disk half buried in the ground. The main character went to see the wreckage and as he stared at it, he realized the top was slowly spinning like someone was unscrewing it. Suddenly, the top popped open and creatures that looked like grey blobs with beaks slowly started to climb out of the ship. Then, a ray of light emitted from the disk on the ground and was aimed at a group of about 40 people who immediately burst into flames! The beam moved away, leaving a trail of fire. Having fled the alien site, the main character ran home to his wife and convinced her they should run to their family in Leatherhead before the “Heat-Ray” destroyed them.
The main character and his wife arrived in Leatherhead, and the main character went back out to return the barrowed cart that had held their belongings. When he was running his errand, he saw something sprinting towards him. It was like a disk sitting on a tripod stand with a Heat-Ray attached to the underside of the disk. The tripod blasted the cart with the
Heat-Ray, but missed the main character (I really should stop calling him that, he deserves a real name). Overrun with fear, he forgot all about his wife and ran to the docks to catch a boat and escape the Martians. When he got there, a Martian tripod had just arrived and all of the ships had already set sail, leaving the main character trapped on the docks…
I would give “War of the Worlds” 5 out of 5 stars because the way it started made me want to keep reading and it had a very unexpected surprise ending. Also, the excitement and anticipation kept building throughout the novel, and I found myself longing to find out the ending. I was also shocked to realize this book was written in the 1897 and H.G. Wells described many inventions that we use today, but would have been unthinkable in his time period, such as the Heat-Ray and the alien tripod. We already have a laser that can cut through stainless steel, so making a Heat-Ray could be easy. In fact, I think that if we fought the Martians today in 2021 (instead of the 1890’s) , we humans would have a good chance of winning! Please tell me in the comments if you think that we would be able to defeat the Martians nowadays (without COVID-19).
