The War of the Worlds
Cylinders fall on the English countryside and something climbs out. Told by an ordinary man walking through the wreckage of his own suburbs, in the voice of a reporter rather than a hero.
Things worth knowing
- Wells wrote it while living in Woking, and told a correspondent he was wrecking and sacking the town, killing his neighbours in painful and eccentric ways before proceeding via Kingston and Richmond to London.
- The Martians owe something to a translation error: Schiaparelli's Italian canali, meaning channels, became canals in English, and Percival Lowell built a canal-digging Martian civilisation on that reading.
Listen, or read along
Every chapter has the recording and the same chapter as text. Open both if you like: the text is the words you are hearing.
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1 Epigraph 19 sec
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2 Book One 15 min
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3 Chapter Two 8 min
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4 Chapter Three 6 min
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5 Chapter Four 7 min
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6 Chapter Five 9 min
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7 Chapter Six 5 min
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8 Chapter Seven 8 min
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9 Chapter Eight 6 min
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10 Chapter Nine 13 min
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11 Chapter Ten 14 min
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12 Chapter Eleven 13 min
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13 Chapter Twelve 25 min
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14 Chapter Thirteen 12 min
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15 Chapter Fourteen 25 min
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16 Chapter Fifteen 18 min
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17 Chapter Sixteen 29 min
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18 Chapter Seventeen 21 min
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19 Book Two 16 min
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20 Chapter Two 22 min
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21 Chapter Three 12 min
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22 Chapter Four 10 min
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23 Chapter Five 6 min
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24 Chapter Six 8 min
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25 Chapter Seven 35 min
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26 Chapter Eight 19 min
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27 Chapter Nine 11 min
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28 Chapter Ten 9 min
Where this comes from
US public domain: first published 1898, before the 1930 cutoff. Author d.1946, so also clear in life+70 jurisdictions.
Cover image: Martian Fighting Machine Hit by Shell, pencil and ink on paper, illustration by Henrique Alvim Corrêa, from the 1906 Belgium (French language) edition.
Narration: text-to-speech.
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