What Happens To The Martians In HG Wells’s “The War Of The Worlds”?

Wells's Martians are basically giant brains in big round bodies. They arrive on earth – in Woking, to be exact – hoping to find a better environment, as their own planet is getting colder. They can only survive by taking in quantitites of fresh living blood, most of which they get by killing humans. Man is quite powerless against this enemy, and unlike the typical adventure story, no leader figure emerges; in a strongly realistic, anti-heroic ending, the Martians are only eventually destroyed when they catch a terrestrial virus to which they have no immunity.

Much of the enduring fame of "The War of the Worlds" comes from the notorious 1938 US radio dramatisation. Read by Orson Welles, this began with a fake announcement of impending doom, which thousands of listeners thought was real. Mass panic followed. A recent Steven Spielberg adaptation (2005) got a calmer reaction. There was also a 1980s musical dramatisation starring Justin Hayward.

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