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Title: The War of the Worlds
by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
ISBN 978-3-7429-0034-0
All rights reserved
It is not permitted to reproduce or publish this work in whole or in part without prior written permission.
The War of the Worlds
by H. G. Wells
‘But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited?
. . . Are we or they Lords of the World?
. . . And how are all things made for man?’
KEPLER (quoted in The Anatomy of Melancholy)
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE
THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS
I
THE EVE OF THE WAR
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall