This book is a tribute to H. G. Wells, his most famous novel, and those adaptations that have been inspired by it. For more than a hundred years, readers, listeners, and moviegoers have been tantalized by the prospect of an invasion from Mars. When H. G. Wells first published The War of the Worlds in 1898, his Victorian audience responded very enthusiastically to the depth and resonance of the work because it reflected their fears and anxieties as they faced the turn of a new century. And while scenes of mass destruction and death are all too familiar to us in light of what happened on September 11, 2001, they were startlingly fresh and nightmarishly overpowering to those living in 1898.

Thankfully, his Martian invasion was the stuff of fiction, not prophecy, and his invaders never arrived with their death rays, tripod machines, and poison gas. But that has not stopped his tale of interplanetary conflict from resonating with subsequent generations of people. From comic books to radio broadcasts, from movies and television to trading cards and record albums, the Martians keep coming back again.and again!.