The War of the Worlds
- 206
- Pages
- about 4 h
- Reading time
- Film 2005 +11
- On screen
- Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century
- NPR Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books
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Our view
“The War of the Worlds” reads almost like reportage: an ordinary civilian watches the Martian invasion unfold, and there is no heroism, only dread and the slow unravelling of order. That sober tone, and the way it turns the logic of empire back on the conquerors, is why it still works. Some readers find the nineteenth-century sentences and technical detail slow and dry, but the novel is short and the effort modest.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells about an attempted invasion of Earth by beings from the planet Mars with much greater intelligence and more advanced weapons than humans. The Martians intend to eliminate mankind and conquer Earth because their own older and smaller world has reached the "last stage of exhaustion". It was written between 1895 and 1897, and serialised in Pearson's Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US in 1897. The full novel was first published in hardcover in 1898 by William Heinemann.
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen 12 times — from 1953 to 2025.
- FilmWar of the WorldsIMDb
- FilmThe War of the WorldsIMDb
- SeriesWar of the WorldsIMDb
- SeriesThe War of the WorldsIMDb
- FilmWar of the Worlds: GoliathIMDb
- FilmH. G. Wells' The War of the WorldsIMDb
- FilmWar of the WorldsIMDb
- FilmH. G. Wells' War of the WorldsIMDb
- SeriesWar of the WorldsIMDb
- FilmWar of the Worlds 2: The Next WaveIMDb
- FilmThe War of the Worlds: Next CenturyIMDb
- TV filmThe Great Martian War 1913 - 1917IMDb
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.5 across 1,198 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 89% of the weight and the score stays at 7.5 — the Classics average of 7.7 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.6 | 164 | 14% |
| Hardcover | 7.5 | 1K | 86% |
Frequently asked
How long is The War of the Worlds?
It has 206 pages — shorter than 92% of the ranked books in Classics.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Classics — with scores between 7.2 and 7.8, closest to this book.
