Stephen Player. Sci-fi Illustration - Stephen Player
Fantasy Illustration
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You may use this text as the basis of any type of illustration you like.
The War of the Worlds
by H.G.Wells
The Martians
A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully
out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.
Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass that framed
them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a
mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped
saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular
appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air.
Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of
its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of
brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant
quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of
the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of
movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth--above all, the
extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes--were at once vital, intense, inhuman,
crippled and monstrous. There was something fungoid in the oily brown skin,
something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty.
Even at this first encounter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and dread.
---------------They were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible to conceive. They
were huge round bodies--or, rather, heads--about four feet in diameter, each body
having in front of it a face. This face had no nostrils--indeed, the Martians do not seem
to have had any sense of smell, but it had a pair of very large dark-coloured eyes, and
just beneath this a kind of fleshy beak. In the back of this head or body--I scarcely
know how to speak of it--was the single tight tympanic surface, since known to be
anatomically an ear, though it must have been almost useless in our dense air. In a
group round the mouth were sixteen slender, almost whiplike tentacles, arranged in
two bunches of eight each. These bunches have since been named rather aptly, by
that distinguished anatomist, Professor Howes, the hands. Even as I saw these
Martians for the first time they seemed to be endeavouring to raise themselves on
these hands, but of course, with the increased weight of terrestrial conditions, this was
impossible. There is reason to suppose that on Mars they may have progressed upon
them with some facility.
The Fighting Machines
And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many
houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a
walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of
steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of
the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in the
air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a
hundred yards nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently
along the ground? That was the impression those instant flashes gave. But instead of a
milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand.
Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere insensate machine
driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible,
glittering tentacles (one of which gripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about
its strange body. It picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen hood that
surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a head looking about.
Behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman's
basket, and puffs of green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the
monster swept by me. And in an instant it was gone.
The Handling Machines
The mechanism it certainly was that held my attention first. It was one of those
complicated fabrics that have since been called handling-machines, and the study of
which has already given such an enormous impetus to terrestrial invention. As it
dawned upon me first, it presented a sort of metallic spider with five jointed, agile legs,
and with an extraordinary number of jointed levers, bars, and reaching and clutching
tentacles about its body. Most of its arms were retracted, but with three long tentacles it
was fishing out a number of rods, plates, and bars which lined the covering and
apparently strengthened the walls of the cylinder. These, as it extracted them, were
lifted out and deposited upon a level surface of earth behind it.
At first, I say, the handling-machine did not impress me as a machine, but as a crablike
creature with a glittering integument, the controlling Martian whose delicate tentacles
actuated its movements seeming to be simply the equivalent of the crab's cerebral
portion.
Its motion was so swift, complex, and perfect that at first I did not see it as a machine,
in spite of its metallic glitter. The fighting machines were co-ordinated and animated to
an extraordinary pitch, but nothing to compare with this. People who have never seen
these structures, and have only the ill-imagined efforts of artists or the imperfect
descriptions of such eye-witnesses as myself to go upon, scarcely realise that living
quality.
Tumult = disorderly. Insensate = lacking physical sensation. Integument = protective outer
layer.