The War of the Worlds
▶ Listen to the free preview — no account neededPlays in your browser; nothing to install. Full story $14.99 with a free account, yours to keep.
About this story
"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's." A falling star lands on Horsell Common outside Woking; a crowd gathers to look at the cylinder; the lid begins to unscrew. Within a week the Heat-Ray has burned the Surrey towns, the Martian fighting-machines are wading the Thames, and six million people are trying to leave London at once.
Wells wrote the first alien-invasion novel in 1897 and set it in the suburbs where he lived, so that the horror lands on named railway stations and real pubs. It is also, unmistakably, a book about empire turned around — the narrator says so — and about how quickly the ordinary machinery of a country stops working. The artilleryman's plans in the cellar, the curate's collapse, the Thunder Child's charge: none of them have dated.
This edition is the complete 1898 text, about seven hours, directed for a cast of twenty-nine, with a sound environment that follows the story from the common to the empty streets of dead London. The narrator and his brother carry the two threads; the artilleryman, the curate, Ogilvy and the rest each have their own voice. The text is on screen as it is read, and your place is saved across devices.
The cast
- Narrator
- The Narrator
- The Artilleryman
- The Curate
- The Narrator's Brother
- Ogilvy
- Henderson
- The Narrator's Wife
- Mrs Elphinstone
How this was made
This is a full-cast production, not a single narrator reading a book. Each character has its own voice, the lines are directed for pace and emotion, and the story plays inside a live sound environment — a hum of machines and distant alarms — that shifts as the scenes change. The voices are synthetic (high-quality text-to-speech, directed by people), and the words appear on screen as they are spoken, so you can read along or follow in a second language.
Questions
Is this the complete novel?
Yes — both books, "The Coming of the Martians" and "The Earth under the Martians", all twenty-seven chapters, unabridged. About seven hours.
Is this the Orson Welles radio play?
No. This is Wells's original 1898 novel, set in England, read in full. The 1938 broadcast was a loose American adaptation.
Is it suitable for younger listeners?
Rated 12+. There is mass destruction and the Martians feed on human blood, but Wells describes it with Victorian restraint.
How much does it cost?
The opening is free to hear right now, no account needed. The full story is $14.99, a one-time purchase with a free account that stays in your library. Several stories on this site are free in full.
Do I need to install anything?
No. Press Play and it opens in your browser. It works on iPhone, iPad, Android and desktop.
Can I read along?
Yes. The text is highlighted word by word as it is spoken, and you can switch the on-screen text to Spanish while listening in English (or the other way round).
Source and rights
"The War of the Worlds" by H. G. Wells, serialized in Pearson's Magazine in 1897 and published in book form by William Heinemann, London, 1898. Public domain. Complete text from Project Gutenberg, directed by ImmersivePage. Cover and chapter art created for this edition.
