Andy Sawyer

Contributor

The War of the Worlds

H. G. Wells's 1898 novel sends Martians to the English countryside, where their machines make Victorian military power look helpless. An unnamed narrator, a writer living in Woking, watches the invasion unfold and tries to stay alive, while his brother witnesses London's panicked exodus. Beyond its famous premise, the book turns the logic of empire back on its own readers by asking how a confident conquering nation behaves when a stronger conqueror arrives. It is among the most influential science fiction books ever written and set the template for later alien-invasion stories. This Penguin Classics edition adds an introduction by Brian Aldiss, editorial material by Patrick Parrinder and notes by Andy Sawyer.

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Contributor

The Invisible Man

H. G. Wells's 1897 novel follows a bandaged, bad-tempered stranger who takes a room at an inn in the Sussex village of Iping. His secret is that he is Griffin, a brilliant optics researcher who has made himself invisible and cannot undo it. What begins as a village comedy of gossip and suspicion turns into a chase and a story of violence. Wells uses the idea to ask what happens when a person gains power and anonymity at the same moment, with nothing to answer to. The book is short, fast and often funny, and it is one of the foundational science fiction books of the late Victorian period. It also fixed the image of the invisible man in popular culture. This Penguin Classics edition adds scholarly notes and an introduction.

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