H. G. Wells’s the War of the Worlds and Memes of Science in Science Fiction

In The War of the Worlds, the young HG Wells introduced or popularized a number of science based themes which, allowing for what was known at the end of the 19th century, hold up fairly well today. The War of the Worlds is possibly the least fantasy-dependent of his novels. In this story of an imaginary invasion of Earth by and older and technologically more advanced civilization from Mars, we find ideas of evolution, astrodynamics, in situ resource use, invasive species, and cultural dissonance that seem disturbingly contemporary in our present time. Later in life he would comment that “nothing remains interesting where anything may happen” [1, p. iv]. In War of the Worlds, what happens is described with chilling realism; no magic or other suspensions of natural laws are invoked and by various means almost everything is made to seem the result of natural processes, as such were known toward the end of the 19th century. The result holds a somewhat horrific mirror to our own future, should we follow the Martian’s path.