War of the Worlds: The Anglo-Martian War of 1895 (Dark Osprey) Paperback – November 17, 2015

This came in the mail for me today as I pre-ordered it several months ago. It was a nice surprise to open the package and see this cyclopean tripod glaring back at me.This is part of Osprey's 'Adventure' imprint, an expanding line-up of reference books for fictional and mythological struggles, ranging from Atlantis to King Arthur to the Cthulhu Mythos. I have read quite a few of them, including an excellent book on the Nazi occult program, a tome on the Knights Templar I found very helpful in my world building, and a great picture book on Steampunk military units. This one, as you can see, focuses on The War of the Worlds.In this book, the war is every bit as circumscribed in time and geography as H.G. Wells’ account in the original novel, leading to its alternate name as the Anglo-Martian War of 1895. (The date of the invasion in the book was 1900. I don’t know why they moved it back five years.) This fictionalized reference cleaves very close to the original narrative as well, adding only a handful of embellishments and fleshing out a couple of the encounters that the narrator of the novel heard about second-hand. This added material is very welcome, and the book suffers for want of more. But I’ll get into that later.Like the non-fiction Osprey references, the book begins with a brief overview of the setting on the eve of battle and then proceeds into an analysis of the organization, manpower (or martianpower), weaponry, and disposition of the belligerents. The assessment of the British army and Royal Navy were accurate enough to my eye, and not fictionalized in any substantial way. The Martians were taken directly from the book: there is some speculation on their motivations, a slightly more detailed analysis of their weaponry (including a novel idea about the nature of the Black Smoke), and a somewhat lengthy but highly intriguing disquisition on their physiology and physiognomy, but otherwise the author did not try to add much to the mythos. Anyone hoping for a revisionist account that redressed the tactical inflexibility of the Martian weaponry, their limited number of assault platforms, or their obvious oversight of aerial and naval resources will be disappointed. The Martians still only have the fighting machine (tripod), the handling machine, the heat ray, and the black smoke. Even the Flying Machine is taken away from them, dismissed as a bit of panicked rumor, unsupported by any wreckage found after the war. The Martians, who are credited with launching ballistic projectiles via gigantic cannons running the length of Olympus Mons and landing them with a precision of a few hundred meters over a distance of millions of miles, are deemed incapable of mastering flight because of the thin atmosphere of their homeworld. Hmmm. No mention is made of Cavorite or the Selenites-as-food-stock, though their inclusion seemed like a no-brainer to me.The battles of the Anglo-Martian War are every bit as one-sided as in the novel, albeit with a sprinkling of minor (and irrelevant) victories thrown in for variety. Maxim’s pom-pom guns prove useful in an isolated instance, sappers manage to blow up a cylinder with hand-planted charges before it unscrews, and artillery secreted within abandoned homes bloody the Martian’s noses—uh, food openings—but these prove to be minor nuisances to the Martian juggernaut. Besides the heroic sacrifice of Thunder Child, the Royal Navy comes into play only once, with a grounded battleship laying waste to much of London in a futile attempt to box in the advancing tripods. Nothing can stop the Martians, until they suddenly die en masse from exposure to common germs. This is one of the great deus ex machina of literature and it is not averted in Osprey’s retelling. Some attempt is made to rationalize why the Martians, who arrived at different times and therefore should have had different periods of disease incubation, seemed to have all died within a few days of each other. However, no attempt is made to rationalize why they were completely unprepared for such contamination.At this point, I should confess that I am a novelist that has written a good deal of fiction based on the War of the Worlds and its aftermath and so have thought about these sorts of questions at great length. Ultimately, these thoughts led me to depart in some significant ways from the original novel. I had hoped that Osprey would take some more liberties with the source material and address, for instance, the serious military limitations of having only gaseous and line-of-sight directed energy weapons, with no indirect fire capability; or how the thicker, much more humid terran atmosphere would degrade the performance of the Martian beam weapons. I expected them to enlarge the war to more than just the Home Counties of England and give us a glimpse at how the French, the Germans, the Americans, and the Japanese battled the invaders. I hoped that the ‘death-by-germ’ angle would be downplayed in favor of a longer, more global war that showed humans of the period taking advantage of the Martian maladaptation to the Earth’s environment, especially as the aliens drove toward the sweltering tropics. I wanted to learn how these creatures from a dry, low-gravity world intended to conquer a planetary surface that was 70% water, with a pull-of-gravity three times greater than Mars.Most of all, I wanted the War of the Worlds to mean something to world history. Alas, the text makes it clear that history unfolded almost exactly as it did in our own world, with both World Wars happening right on schedule and the Cold War following along close behind, all with the same outcomes. No advances of any significance were obtained from studying the Martian technology or biology; conveniently, almost no biological trace of the Martians, their food-stock, or the red weed was left to study. The status quo goes marching on!I don’t understand why, if you are going to go so far as to write a pseudo-history of a science fiction novel, you would work so hard to make it fit into our real-life history. Not only does it undermine the suspension of disbelief, it makes the whole exercise irrelevant. If nothing changed, then the Martian invasion might as well never have happened, and we might as well not talk about it.All that may seem a bit nit-picky, but it did dampen my enjoyment of the book. The casual reader who has not thought a great deal about the War of the Worlds or, if it were real, its inevitable repercussions, will probably not even notice these shortcomings. Then again, that sort of person would probably not be very interested in buying this book.But unrealistically lofty expectations aside, I did enjoy the book enough to read it cover to cover in a few hours. The writing is concise and engaging and it is filled with beautiful artwork (this is almost universally true of Osprey books). It also included a bunch of easter eggs for the joy of the attentive reader, including appearances by the Triffids, Moriarty, Sebastian Moran, Adam Adamant, and Fu Manchu. Professor Challenger also appears, though he gets short-shrift, referred to only as the student of real-life boffin William Rutherford, and is not even accorded the title of professor. (No wonder G.E.C. hated journalists!) If you eat this kind of stuff up like I do, you’ll really enjoy it.Overall, I’m glad I bought it, even if I can’t shake a sense of disappointment over what it could have been. If you are a fan of both the War of the Worlds and military history, it’s worth the ~$13.

This is a very enjoyable read and presents the reader with an interesting and detailed historical backdrop for the events that occurred in the classical story. The illustrations are well done and complement the reading.

A very interesting extrapolation of Wells' book, treating it as real history. This well researched volume gives fascinating background on the politics and the state of Britain's military at the time of the invasion. As a history it takes the liberty of creating battles not covered by Wells and also giving a different perspective on military operations mentioned in the War Of The Worlds.While there are deviations from the source material that might disturb the purest, the changes - or elaborations - add to the feel of an authentic history and the confusing fog of war that leaves some events open to multiple interpretations.The illustrations are delightful and plentiful.I enjoyed it tremendously and recommend it to any fans of "The War of the Worlds" who want to revisit the invasion. It reads like history - and that's a lot of the fun.

It was a gift and he is very happy with it every Halloween he reads War of the Worlds so this was a added treat

An imaginative expansion on the HGW classic. Brings in British politics. Good art.

Good look at the history of England at the time of the invasion. Missed on somethings mentioned by Wells in the original book (Martians being extra-dimensional, or earthmen learning about the launches from mars to venus, etc. Would have liked a hint tying that invasion and the '38 invasion and follow up book.

Somewhat disappointing - I had hoped that the author was able to go more in detail about the Empire forces arrayed against the Martians. Wished that they had more maps.

A well done account of the HG Wells story as if it had happened. Very readable and if you are a steampunk or Victorian gaming buff many ideas were there. A good read!

I was rather expecting another version of HG Wells War of the World. What it was, was almost a history paper written by somebody who had read all the reports a hundred years later. The art work was fantastic, as was the blending in (If you were a Science Fiction reader) of things like The Triffids, and Quatermass and the Pit, along with characters from Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps a bit short at eighty pages, which is why I only rated it a four star. Perhaps after Christmas I will dabble with book two and three.

The Anglo-Martian War of 1895 is a very good rewriting in modern English of the original “War of the Worlds” from H.G. Wells. It is a shorter book, 80 pages, with a very enjoyable style. This book contains very good descriptions of the Martians, the Martian servitors, the Martian fighting machines, the red weed, the Cylinders and the Launch Cannon (pages 18 to 35) as well an additional short sequel of the story in our modern time. It is really a very enjoyable book. Even if you have already read the original you should read that version of the ‘’War of the Worlds’’ by Mike Brunton.In addition the book is very well printed on a very good quality paper and it is largely illustrated with very good black and white pictures and very wonderful full page color pictures (many thanks to the illustrator Alan Lathwell).A very enjoyable ‘’War of the Worlds’’.>

It's an Ok follow on to the great work of H.G. but the author can't resist the left of centre critique of the Empire and Britain in general, which is not a problem normally but hugely out of place in a book supposedly written by someone from this timeline.

Could have so much more, seemed have baked. Iam a major fan of War of the world's. Feel like this was a half a project and been decided to sell it. I'll give it a miss if I could save the price tag, unless you can pick it up for afew pounds.

Well written and readable, but as a lifelong War of the Worlds and Wells fan, I was hoping for so much more. The author does a great job in terms of tone and atmosphere, but it really doesn't go into much depth about the actual war - there's even actions mentioned in Wells' original that aren't covered in this at all, and there are inconsistencies. Recommended if it was lower priced, but at this mark, I'm not sure it adds much to the novel.