The Time Machine/The War of the Worlds

H. G. Wells

1895/1898

These two stories might not be quite the best known Science Fiction stories written but they must be close.

The Time Machine takes us to a time many thousands of years in the future when the activities of social segregation has led to speciation - the delicate and thoughtless Eloi have the surface and the sunlit hours. But there is the underground and the strange mis-shapen inhabitants who only came to the surface in the darkest of the dark.

The thumping that can be felt under his feet by the Victorian Scientist who stumbled into this apparent paradise told a darker story for those who were still capable of curiosity.

But even the Scientist did not believe the truth until he came face to face with a shaggy haired Morlock.

When he is forced to go underground to the Morlocks' lair he realises the full horrific truth!

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The War of the Worlds is set more conventionally at the turn of the nineteenth century, but those capsules that came flashing down from the sky were not mere meteorites burning harmlessly up in the atmosphere.

At first, when a capsule opens in the southwestern home counties those watching are disgusted but not particularly worried. But all this changes when the Martians brought out their heat rays that managed to cook those watching!

This is the start of a fortnight that led to the devastation of the Home Counties and the greatest city on the planet, and the humbling of the vaunted Victorian technology.

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This book is part of the Science Fiction Masterworks series. 

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