The War of the Worlds

H. G. Wells

Language: English (US)

Cylinders fall out of the sky onto the Surrey commons, and what climbs from them destroys the British army in an afternoon. An unnamed narrator records the collapse of ordinary life as the machines advance on London, and what finally stops them owes nothing to human resistance. Published in 1898, it invented the alien-invasion story and turned the imperial confidence of its age back on its readers. Public domain in the EU (author died 1946). Source: Project Gutenberg.