The War of the Worlds, the universal science fiction novel written by Herbert George Wells, which describes a Martian invasion of Earth. Wells' novel has been adapted to different media: films, radio shows, video games, comics and television series.

The story of the novel takes place in London at the beginning of the 20th century. The protagonist, a writer of speculative science articles, visits an observatory in Ottershaw at the invitation of a "remarkable astronomer" named Ogilvy. There they witness an explosion on the surface of the planet Mars. Years later, what is believed to be a "meteor" lands in the communal field of Horsell, near London. The narrator has his home nearby, and he is one of the first to discover that the object is an artificial cylinder launched from Mars. The cylinder opens, and from it Martians emerge: voluminous creatures similar to giant octopi that begin the creation of strange mechanisms in the impact crater of the cylinder. A crowd of humans moves towards the crater and are incinerated by the heat ray.