HG (Her­bert George) Wells (1866–1946) was a pro­lif­ic writer with more than fifty nov­els and dozens of short sto­ries to his name. His out­put was an eclec­tic mix, includ­ing works of social com­men­tary, pol­i­tics, his­to­ry, pop­u­lar sci­ence, satire, biog­ra­phy, and futur­ism (he fore­saw the advent of air­craft, tanks, space trav­el, nuclear weapons, satel­lite tele­vi­sion and some­thing akin to the World Wide Web) – but of course what he is best remem­bered for is his sci­ence fic­tion, fol­low­ing the remark­able rapid-fire pub­li­ca­tion over a four-year peri­od of instant clas­sics The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doc­tor More­au (1896), The Invis­i­ble Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898).

The War of the Worlds is one of the ear­li­est sto­ries to detail a con­flict between mankind and an extra-ter­res­tri­al race. It presents itself as a fac­tu­al account of a Mar­t­ian inva­sion as wit­nessed by the nar­ra­tor. You know the plot: appar­ent mete­ors have rained down around the narrator’s home town of Wok­ing (through which I trav­elled by train recent­ly, prompt­ing me to make a men­tal note to write this very blog), but which of course turn out to be far from inor­gan­ic space rock, but instead very much not-friend­ly space aliens bent on destroy­ing human­i­ty.

The first edi­tion was illus­trat­ed by British artist War­wick Gob­le: inky, black-and-white depic­tions that were eerie, imag­i­na­tive, excit­ing, and thor­ough­ly of their late Vic­to­ri­an time. Lat­er, in 1906, the French edi­tions were illus­trat­ed by the Brazil­ian artist Hen­rique Alvim Cor­rêa, which turned out to be some­thing of an upgrade, adding to the evo­ca­tion of Wells’ imag­ined crea­tures and their ves­sels, and of which Wells him­self might­i­ly approved.

The War of the Worlds has spawned half a dozen fea­ture films and tele­vi­sion series, a record album and musi­cal show (Jeff Wayne, of course), but per­haps the most impact­ful drama­ti­sa­tion came in the 1938 radio pro­gramme direct­ed by and star­ring Orson Welles. It was very much played for real and if you hap­pened to miss the intro­duc­to­ry mono­logue – which thou­sands of lis­ten­ers did – you could be for­giv­en for think­ing the dra­ma was a live news­cast of devel­op­ing events. The pro­gramme famous­ly cre­at­ed wide­spread pan­ic with hordes of peo­ple believ­ing that  a real-life Mar­t­ian inva­sion was under­way right then in North Amer­i­ca (Welles had swapped out Wok­ing for Grover’s Mill, New Jer­sey). It’s easy to scoff at the mass cred­u­lous­ness of the pub­lic, but you decide: here’s a clip of the broad­cast. Might you have believed it, too?