The War of the Worlds — H. G. Wells

Cylinders crash from the sky. From within, towering tripods rise and a cold, methodical enemy advances. London and its outskirts become a landscape of flight and awe as an unnamed narrator records the collapse of certainties—empire, science, faith in progress. The War of the Worlds fuses relentless action with a fierce critique of colonialism and human arrogance. With indelible images—the heat-ray, the black smoke—Wells invents the alien invasion as a mirror to our own conquests. A visionary classic whose urgency never fades.