I.
by H. G. Wells · 2026-03-31
**THE EVE OF WAR**
No one could have imagined, in the final years of the nineteenth century, that our world was being observed closely by beings far more advanced than ourselves, yet just as mortal. While people busied themselves with their daily lives, they were being scrutinized, perhaps as intently as a scientist examines the tiny organisms in a drop of water. With a sense of complacency, humanity went about its affairs, confident in its dominion over the material world. Itâs likely that the microscopic creatures felt the same way.
Most people didnât consider the distant worlds of space as potential threats. If they thought of them at all, it was to dismiss the idea of life on those planets as improbable. Itâs interesting to reflect on the mindset of those bygone days. Many imagined there might be other humans on Mars, perhaps less evolved than themselves, ready to embrace a missionary endeavor. Yet, across the vastness of space, minds that were to ours what ours are to the creatures that perish, vast and cold intellects, looked at our planet with envy and slowly began to devise their plans against us. Then, early in the twentieth century, came the great awakening.
Mars, as Iâm sure you know, orbits the sun at an average distance of 140 million miles, receiving barely half the light and heat that our planet enjoys. If the nebular hypothesis holds any truth, Mars is older than Earth; life must have begun there long before our planet cooled enough to support it. Its smaller size, being only about one-seventh of Earth's volume, likely sped up its cooling process, allowing life to emerge. Mars has air and water, everything necessary for sustaining life.
Yet, in their arrogance, humans failed to consider that intelligent life on Mars might have evolved beyond their own level. Few understood that since Mars is older and smaller, it is not only further along in its cooling process but also closer to its end.
The gradual cooling that will one day affect our planet has already progressed significantly on Mars. Its physical state remains largely a mystery, but we now know that even at midday in its equatorial region, temperatures barely reach those of our coldest winters. Its atmosphere is much thinner than ours, and its oceans have receded to cover only a third of its surface. As its slow seasons change, massive snowcaps form and melt at both poles, periodically flooding its temperate zones. For the inhabitants of Mars, this looming exhaustion has become an immediate crisis. The pressing need for survival has sharpened their intellects, expanded their capabilities, and hardened their hearts. Gazing across the void with instruments and intellects beyond our imagination, they see, just 35 million miles away, a beacon of hopeâour own warmer planet, lush with vegetation and shimmering with water, its cloudy atmosphere hinting at fertility, revealing glimpses of bustling lands and narrow seas filled with ships.
To them, we humans must seem as alien and insignificant as monkeys and lemurs do to us. The intellectual side of humanity acknowledges that life is a relentless struggle for survival, and it seems the Martians share this belief. Their world is far along in its cooling, while ours is still teeming with life, albeit life they consider inferior. Their only escape from the creeping destruction that threatens them is to wage war towards the sun.
Before we judge them too harshly, we must remember the ruthless destruction our own species has inflictedânot just on animals like the bison and the dodo, but also on other human races. The Tasmanians, despite their human resemblance, were completely wiped out in a war of extermination led by European settlers in just fifty years. Are we truly so merciful that we can complain if the Martians act with the same intent?
The Martians had clearly calculated their descent with remarkable precision. Their understanding of mathematics seemed to far exceed our own, and their preparations were executed with near-perfect coordination. If our instruments had been more advanced, we might have detected the brewing trouble as early as the nineteenth century. Observers like Schiaparelli studied the red planetâstrangely, Mars has been associated with war for centuriesâbut they failed to interpret the shifting patterns they meticulously recorded. All that time, the Martians must have been preparing.
During the opposition of 1894, a brilliant light appeared on the illuminated part of Mars, first spotted at the Lick Observatory, then by Perrotin in Nice, and later by other astronomers. English readers learned about it from the August 2 issue of *Nature*. I suspect that this flash was the result of the massive gun being forged in the enormous pit on their planet, the very weapon from which they would launch their attacks on us. Strange markings, still unexplained, were observed near that site during the following two oppositions.
The storm hit us six years ago. As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle from Java sent shockwaves through the astronomical community with the astonishing news of a massive eruption of incandescent gas on the planet. It happened around midnight on the twelfth, and when he quickly turned to the spectroscope, it revealed a torrent of flaming gas, primarily hydrogen, hurtling toward Earth at incredible speed. This fiery jet vanished around a quarter past twelve. He described it as a colossal burst of flame, âlike flaming gases shooting out of a gun.â
It was a strikingly apt description. Yet the next day, the news barely made a ripple in the papers, appearing only as a small note in the *Daily Telegraph*, and the world remained blissfully unaware of one of the gravest threats humanity had ever faced. I might never have learned about the eruption if I hadnât run into Ogilvy, the renowned astronomer, at Ottershaw. He was buzzing with excitement and, in his enthusiasm, invited me to join him that night for a closer look at the red planet.
Despite everything that has happened since, I still vividly remember that night: the dark, silent observatory, the dim lantern casting a weak glow on the floor, the rhythmic ticking of the telescopeâs clockwork, and the small slit in the roofâa deep rectangle streaked with stardust. Ogilvy moved around, invisible but audible. Looking through the telescope, I saw a circle of deep blue with the tiny planet floating in the view. It seemed so small and bright, faintly marked with stripes, slightly flattened at the edges. It was just a pinprick of light, shimmering as if it were alive, though it was really the telescope vibrating with the mechanics that kept the planet in focus.
As I watched, the planet appeared to grow larger and smaller, moving closer and then further away, but that was just my tired eyes playing tricks. It was over forty million miles awayâmore than forty million miles of emptiness. Few people truly grasp the vastness of the void in which the material universe drifts.
Nearby, I remember spotting three faint points of light, distant stars, surrounded by the unfathomable darkness of space. You know how that blackness looks on a cold, starry night. Through a telescope, it seems even deeper. And hidden from my sight, because it was so far away and so small, something was hurtling toward us across that unimaginable distance, drawing closer by the minute, bringing with it a wave of struggle, disaster, and death. I had no idea as I watched; no one on Earth could have imagined that precise missile was on its way.
That night, there was another burst of gas from Mars. I saw itâa reddish flash at the edge, a slight protrusion of the outline just as the clock struck midnight. I told Ogilvy, and he took my place at the telescope. The night was warm, and I felt thirsty, so I clumsily stretched my legs and made my way in the darkness to the little table where the siphon was, while Ogilvy marveled at the stream of gas shooting out toward us.
That night, another unseen projectile launched from Mars, just a little under twenty-four hours after the first one. I remember sitting at the table in the darkness, colors of green and crimson swirling in my vision. I wished for a light to smoke by, unaware of the significance of the faint glimmer I had spotted and all that it would soon bring. Ogilvy watched the sky until one in the morning, then finally gave up. We lit the lantern and made our way to his house. Below us, in the darkness, Ottershaw and Chertsey lay peacefully asleep, their hundreds of residents unaware of the impending chaos.
Ogilvy was full of theories that night about Mars. He dismissed the popular notion that it was home to intelligent life trying to communicate with us. Instead, he speculated that meteorites might be showering down on the planet or that a massive volcanic eruption was underway. He pointed out how unlikely it was that organic evolution had taken the same path on both planets.
âThe odds against anything resembling humans on Mars are a million to one,â he said.
Hundreds of observers witnessed the flame that night, and again around midnight the following night, and for ten nights in total, a flame appearing each night. Why the blasts stopped after the tenth night remains a mystery. Perhaps the gases from the explosions caused problems for the Martians. Thick clouds of smoke or dust, visible through powerful telescopes as little grey, shifting patches, spread across the planetâs atmosphere, obscuring its familiar features.
Even the daily newspapers finally took notice of the disturbances, with articles popping up everywhere about the volcanoes on Mars. The satirical magazine _Punch_ cleverly incorporated it into a political cartoon. Meanwhile, those missiles the Martians had fired were hurtling toward Earth, racing through the vast emptiness of space at incredible speeds, inching closer day by day. It seems almost unbelievable now that, with such a swift fate looming over us, people continued with their trivial daily lives. I remember how thrilled Markham was to secure a new photograph of the planet for the illustrated paper he was editing at the time. People today hardly grasp the abundance and innovation of our nineteenth-century publications. As for me, I was preoccupied with learning to ride a bicycle and writing a series of papers on the potential evolution of moral ideas as civilization advanced.
One night, when the first missile was still nearly 10 million miles away, I took a walk with my wife. The stars were bright, and I explained the Signs of the Zodiac to her, pointing out Mars, a bright dot of light climbing toward the zenith, the focus of so many telescopes. It was a warm evening. On our way home, we passed a group of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth, singing and playing music. Lights flickered in the upper windows of houses as people settled in for the night. From the distant railway station came the sounds of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened into a sort of melody by the distance. My wife drew my attention to the vivid red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging against the night sky. Everything felt so safe and tranquil.