Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles swinging and rattling about its strange body.… Behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman’s basket, and puffs of green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster swept by me. And in an instant it was gone.—Book 1, Chap. 10, ¶15
H.G. Wells
The War of the Worlds
H. G. Wells
The prototype for all science fiction, H. G. Wells’s fantastic novel will not let you out of its grip as it narrates the invasion of Earth by ruthless Martians. In 1938, a radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds—done in the style of a news broadcast—panicked the listening public.
