{"product_id":"2940014490245","title":"The War of the Worlds","description":"CHAPTER ONE\u003cbr\u003eTHE EVE OF THE WAR\u003cbr\u003eNo one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth\u003cbr\u003ecentury that this world was being watched keenly and closely by\u003cbr\u003eintelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as\u003cbr\u003emen busied themselves about their various concerns they were\u003cbr\u003escrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a\u003cbr\u003emicroscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and\u003cbr\u003emultiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to\u003cbr\u003eand fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their\u003cbr\u003eassurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the\u003cbr\u003einfusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to\u003cbr\u003ethe older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of\u003cbr\u003ethem only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or\u003cbr\u003eimprobable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of\u003cbr\u003ethose departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be\u003cbr\u003eother men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to\u003cbr\u003ewelcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds\u003cbr\u003ethat are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish,\u003cbr\u003eintellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with\u003cbr\u003eenvious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And\u003cbr\u003eearly in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.\u003cbr\u003eThe planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the\u003cbr\u003esun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it\u003cbr\u003ereceives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world.\u003cbr\u003eIt must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our\u003cbr\u003eworld; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its\u003cbr\u003ePage 1\u003cbr\u003eThe War of the Worlds\u003cbr\u003esurface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one\u003cbr\u003eseventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling\u003cbr\u003eto the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water\u003cbr\u003eand all that is necessary for the support of animated existence.\u003cbr\u003eYet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer,\u003cbr\u003eup to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that\u003cbr\u003eintelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all,\u003cbr\u003ebeyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since\u003cbr\u003eMars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the\u003cbr\u003esuperficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that\u003cbr\u003eit is not only more distant from time's beginning but nearer its end.\u003cbr\u003eThe secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has\u003cbr\u003ealready gone far indeed with our neighbour. Its physical condition is\u003cbr\u003estill largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial\u003cbr\u003eregion the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest\u003cbr\u003ewinter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have\u003cbr\u003eshrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow\u003cbr\u003eseasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and\u003cbr\u003eperiodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of\u003cbr\u003eexhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a\u003cbr\u003epresent-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate\u003cbr\u003epressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their\u003cbr\u003epowers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with\u003cbr\u003einstruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of,\u003cbr\u003ethey see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of\u003cbr\u003ethem, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with\u003cbr\u003evegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of\u003cbr\u003efertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad\u003cbr\u003estretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.\u003cbr\u003eAnd we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them\u003cbr\u003eat least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The\u003cbr\u003eintellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant\u003cbr\u003estruggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief\u003cbr\u003eof the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and\u003cbr\u003ethis world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they\u003cbr\u003eregard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed,\u003cbr\u003etheir only escape from the destruction that, generation after\u003cbr\u003egeneration, creeps upon them.\u003cbr\u003eAnd before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what\u003cbr\u003eruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only\u003cbr\u003eupon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its\u003cbr\u003einferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness,\u003cbr\u003ewere entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged\u003cbr\u003eby European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such\u003cbr\u003eapostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the..","brand":"All classic book warehouse","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47147698880752,"sku":"2940014490245","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940014490245_p0.jpg?v=1763609500","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940014490245","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}