The War of the Worlds

H. G. Wells · Sci-Fi · 27 chapters · 5h 49m · 4 voices

Martians invade the English countryside in their tripod war-machines, destroying everything in their path with heat rays and black smoke. One Surrey journalist survives to record the fall and unexpected salvation of humanity.

The smallest cast here — four voices — and the one that proves the format is not a gimmick. Wells wrote an eyewitness account: an unnamed journalist describing what he saw, hour by hour, in the flat tone of a man trying to be accurate about something impossible. Most of the book is his narration, so the recording mostly rests on that voice holding twenty-seven chapters. The two characters he is trapped with — the curate, who comes apart, and the artilleryman, who has a plan for humanity and is obviously deluded — are the argument the novel is making, and hearing them as separate people makes those long dialogues land as debates rather than a monologue.

The voices that carry it

The curate and the artilleryman are the whole point: two responses to catastrophe, both wrong, and both entirely convincing while they are talking. They are cast as far apart as the catalogue allows.

Chapter one plays without an account. Start listening to The War of the Worlds.

Voice cast

3 characters plus the narrator, each with their own voice. All the voices of The War of the Worlds.

The Artilleryman — A British army artilleryman the narrator meets twice. Pragmatic, irreverent, a survivor with a grandiose plan for underground resistance that he lacks the discipline to execute.
The Curate — A frightened, unravelling clergyman the narrator shelters with briefly. His faith and reason disintegrate under the weight of the catastrophe, becoming a dangerous liability.
The Narrator's Brother — The narrator's brother in London, whose parallel experience of the invasion is related in Book Two. Practical and protective.

Chapters

Chapter I: The Eve of the War 13m
Chapter II: The Falling Star 8m
Chapter III: On Horsell Common 6m
Chapter IV: The Cylinder Opens 7m
Chapter V: The Heat-ray 9m
Chapter VI: The Heat-ray in the Chobham Road 5m
Chapter VII: How I Reached Home 8m
Chapter VIII: Friday Night 6m
Chapter IX: The Fighting Begins 12m
Chapter X: In the Storm 13m
Chapter XI: At the Window 12m
Chapter XII: What I Saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton 22m
Chapter XIII: How I Fell in with the Curate 11m
Chapter XIV: In London 22m
Chapter XV: What Had Happened in Surrey 17m
Chapter XVI: The Exodus from London 25m
Chapter XVII: The “Thunder Child” 19m
Chapter I: Under Foot 15m
Chapter II: What We Saw from the Ruined House 20m
Chapter III: The Days of Imprisonment 11m
Chapter IV: The Death of the Curate 9m
Chapter V: The Stillness 6m
Chapter VI: The Work of Fifteen Days 7m
Chapter VII: The Man on Putney Hill 30m
Chapter VIII: Dead London 18m
Chapter IX: Wreckage 10m
Chapter X: The Epilogue 8m

About this recording

Why does The War of the Worlds have so few voices?

Because Wells wrote it that way. The narrator is alone for most of the book, and the catalogue does not invent speaking parts to pad a cast — four characters speak, so four voices were cast.

Is this the original 1898 novel?

Yes, unabridged, set in Woking and the Surrey countryside rather than the American settings used by later adaptations.