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The War of the Worlds
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The War of the Worlds Paperback - 2005

by H. G. Wells; Patrick Parrinder (Editor); Introduction by Brian Aldiss

H.G. Wells' original masterpiece now includes a newly established text, a full biographical essay on the author, a list of further reading, and detailed notes. Famous for the mistaken panic that ensued from Orson Welles' 1938 radio dramatization, "The War of the Worlds" remains one of the most influential of all science fiction works.


Summary

The ultimate science fiction classic For more than one hundred years this compelling tale of the Martian invasion of Earth has enthralled readers with a combination of imagination and incisive commentary on the imbalance of power that continues to be relevant today

From the publisher

Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, England, on September 21, 1866. His father was a professional cricketer and sometime shopkeeper, his mother a former lady’s maid. Although "Bertie" left school at fourteen to become a draper’s apprentice (a life he detested), he later won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London, where he studied with the famous Thomas Henry Huxley. He began to sell articles and short stories regularly in 1893. In 1895, his immediately successful novel rescued him from a life of penury on a schoolteacher’s salary. His other "scientific romances"—The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), The First Men in the Moon (1901), and The War in the Air (1908)—won him distinction as the father of science fiction.

Henry James saw in Wells the most gifted writer of the age, but Wells, having coined the phrase "the war that will end war" to describe World War I, became increasingly disillusioned and focused his attention on educating mankind with his bestselling Outline of History (1920) and his later utopian works. Living until 1946, Wells witnessed a world more terrible than any of his imaginative visions, and he bitterly observed: "Reality has taken a leaf from my book and set itself to supercede me."


Andy Sawyer is the librarian of the Science Fiction Foundation Collection at the University of Liverpool Library.

Details

  • Title The War of the Worlds
  • Author H. G. Wells; Patrick Parrinder (Editor); Introduction by Brian Aldiss
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Reprint
  • Pages 240
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Penguin Group, London
  • Date 2005-05-04
  • Features Annotated, Bibliography, Maps
  • ISBN 9780141441030 / 0141441038
  • Weight 0.43 lbs (0.20 kg)
  • Dimensions 7.82 x 5.03 x 0.63 in (19.86 x 12.78 x 1.60 cm)
  • Ages 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Library of Congress subjects Science fiction, Mars (Planet)
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2005276147
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

Media reviews

Citations

  • Ingram Advance, 06/01/2005, Page 101

About the author

H.G. Wells was a professional writer and journalist, who published more than a hundred books, including novels, histories, essays and programmes for world regeneration. Wells's prophetic imagination was first displayed in pioneering works of science fiction, but later he became an apostle of socialism, science and progress. His controversial views on sexual equality and the shape of a truly developed nation remain directly relevant to our world today. He was, in Bertrand Russell's words, 'an important liberator of thought and action'.

Brian Aldiss is a famed science fiction writer. Patrick Parrinder has written on H.G. Wells, science fiction, James Joyce and the history of the English novel. Since 1986 he has been Professor of English at the University of Reading.

Andy Sawyer is a Librarian at the University of Liverpool with a particular interest in science fiction. He has annotated four volumes in this series.

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The War of the Worlds

The War of the Worlds

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by Wells, H. G

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