The War Of The Worlds

Author: H. G. Wells

This is the only book on this list that doesn't actually set foot on Mars, so in a sense it's not a Martian novel at all. But it was the key book that fixed the popular idea of Martians, and it was the first great alien invasion story ever written. In the depths of space our older sibling planet is running out of resources, so intelligences vast and cool turn their attention upon Earth; and in time launch their attack. As the 19th century ends a mysterious cylinder falls upon Horsham Common, west of London, and as a curious crowd gathers a horrible creature crawls out and turns a terrifying heat ray upon them. The invasion has begun, the great colonising power of the Victorian age is about to be colonised. So we get the great tripod war machines, the heat rays and black smoke, the red vegetation that quickly swamps the landscape, while thousands flee, the army fights hopelessly, and a few stragglers survive in the ruins. It's a vivid, dramatic and devastating novel. The War of the Worlds was one of the five brilliant scientific romances that Wells wrote at the beginning of his career that effectively invented modern science fiction. The influence of this book can be seen not just in the Orson Welles dramatization or the film versions, but in the number of sequels it has generated, from Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss, a dreadful book rushed out immediately after Wells's original, to books like The Space Machine by Christopher Priest which you'll find elsewhere on this list.