Shownotes Transcript
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Hello, my name's Tim. Today's story was written at the turn of the 20th century and is one of the great classics of science fiction. It's a fantastically imaginative story. You might even say it's out of this world. We begin in the English town of Woking.
The narrator, whose name we never learn, is looking through a telescope with his friend Ogilvy and has just witnessed jets of gas firing off from Mars, but is unaware of what this signifies. Later, some sort of comet crashes into a nearby park. He goes to investigate and finds a long metal cylinder buried in a large pit.
Ogilvy is there with a crowd of onlookers all fired up with excitement. The end of the cylinder begins to unscrew and tentacles emerge, followed by a creature with a rounded body and large eyes.
The crowds retreat in horror as a strange rod-shaped machine rises from the pit. Ogilvy approaches, but the rod begins to hiss before setting fire to the ground around him with an invisible heat ray. It turns towards Ogilvy and he is vaporized.
The narrator escapes back home to his wife. A military unit is dispatched to the crash site and a firefight breaks out. The narrator sees neighbouring houses catch fire and realises his home is within range of the heat ray. As more of the Martian cylinders streak across the sky, they decide to flee to another town. After dropping his wife off, the narrator returns to Woking alone.
In the distance, he sees two enormous tripods, machines with three legs, pushing through trees as if they were grass. He finds soldiers who tell him that they had fired on one of these tripods, but its heat ray had destroyed their entire base with ease. They set off to rejoin the narrator's wife, but run into five of the Martian tripods.
The soldiers open fire and manage to destroy one, but the machines fight fire with fire, and the narrator only survives by jumping into a river. He finds shelter in a building where he meets a curate, who is raving about the end of days.
Meanwhile, the narrator's brother, who lives in London, is being evacuated. The huge crowds are dangerous and panic adds fuel to the fire. The brother rescues two women from violent robbers and they escape onto a ship while Martians pursue them over the water. A naval ship heroically puts itself in the line of fire, ramming into the tripods and destroying them, allowing the civilians to escape.
The narrator and the curate have escaped immediate danger and found a house with plenty of food. However, it's out of the frying pan and into the fire as another of the Martian spacecrafts crashes directly into the house, destroying it and trapping them inside with the creatures. They observe them secretly through a crack in the wall and witness their gruesome treatment of a human captive. It's a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very
It's too much for the curate, who begins yelling wildly. The narrator, with fire in his belly, knocks him out to keep him quiet. But the Martians have already heard, and a metal tentacle snakes through the crack, finding the curate and dragging him into their lair. The narrator hides in the coal cellar, terrified and hungry for days.
When he emerges, he finds that the Martians have disappeared. It turns out that they have been defeated, not by humanity, but by bacteria. Having no microbes on their planet, they never developed immunity to Earth's diseases and have all died from illness.
The narrator heads back to Woking, where he is reunited with his wife, and humanity realises they must find unity if they wish to survive future attacks. Wow, what a fantastic story. H.G. Wells' imagination must have been firing on all cylinders. Hope you enjoyed it, and I will see you again soon for another classic story. Goodbye.
I'm Zing Singh. And I'm Simon Jack. And together we host Good Bad Billionaire. The podcast exploring the lives of some of the world's richest people. In the new season, we're setting our sights on some big names. Yep, LeBron James and Martha Stewart, to name just a few. And as always, Simon and I are trying to decide whether we think they're good, bad or just another billionaire. That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.