No one believed the invasion would come from Mars—until the first cylinder fell on Horsell Common.

When strange objects begin crashing into the English countryside, curious onlookers gather to witness what appears to be an extraordinary astronomical event. Then the cylinders open.

The beings inside possess intelligence far beyond humanity’s own. Armed with devastating Heat-Rays, poisonous black smoke, and towering three-legged fighting machines, the Martians sweep aside military resistance and turn familiar towns into burning ruins.

Caught in the destruction, an unnamed narrator struggles across a collapsing England, desperate to survive and reunite with his wife. Around him, order gives way to panic as roads fill with refugees, cities empty, and human civilization appears powerless before an enemy that views mankind with the same indifference humans show lesser creatures.

Yet the invaders have entered a world whose smallest inhabitants may prove more dangerous than its armies.

First published in 1898, H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds helped define modern science fiction and established the alien-invasion story for generations to come. Both a gripping survival narrative and a provocative reflection on empire, technology, and human vulnerability, it remains as urgent and unsettling as ever.

Narrated by Roger Arnold.