Original artwork, not a still
The War of the Worlds • 1898
No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely...
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
It is one of the great openers because it flips the usual alien story: humans are the creatures under the lens, smug and unaware. The cool, reportorial voice makes the invasion feel like history rather than adventure. Its microscope image is why the novel still reads as a warning about complacency, not just about Martians, and the opening has been recited again and again in adaptations.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for The War of the WorldsShow the scene
The first sentence of the novel, in Book One, Chapter I, "The Eve of the War". An unnamed narrator looks back and says that late-Victorian humanity went about its small business while intelligences greater than man's yet as mortal as his own studied it, as a microscope watches creatures in a drop of water. Wells then turns to Mars, an older world cooling toward its end, whose cool, unsympathetic minds drew up their plans against Earth. Early in the twentieth century, he says, came the great disillusionment. The book ran in Pearson's Magazine and Cosmopolitan in 1897, and appeared in hardback from Heinemann in 1898.
Sources (2)
- Project Gutenberg: The War of the WorldsBook One, Chapter I, The Eve of the War, opening paragraphsReference checked
- Wikipedia: The War of the WorldsLead and infoboxReference checked
Context reviewed
