# Wells makes the imperial power vulnerable

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH04.P027](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH04.P027/#char=1286,1333): "notably in the early romances of Mr. H.G. Wells"

*The War of the Worlds* is a particularly close example: its opening makes humanity the object of surveillance by superior extraterrestrial intelligence and its invasion turns English security into helplessness. The novel was serialized in 1897 and published as a book in 1898; the [Morgan Library's record](https://www.themorgan.org/printed-books/371751) identifies a London Heinemann copy and the April–December serialization. The text consulted here is [Project Gutenberg's electronic witness](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36/36-h/36-h.htm), not a collation of those original installments.

But Wells's opening also complicates Chesterton's account. Book I, chapter 1 explicitly compares the Martians' assault with European immigrants' exterminatory treatment of Tasmanians. The narrative thus uses cosmic aggression to expose human imperial aggression. Chesterton's comparison between mankind and a conquered nationality has a close counterpart inside Wells's fiction itself. This supports the relevance of the novel without proving that Chesterton intended this title alone, or that its hostile heavens derive specifically from Spencer. Indeed, the threat in this opening comes from intelligence and technology, not simply greater physical size.

## Sources

- [H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, Project Gutenberg ebook 36](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36/36-h/36-h.htm), Book I, chapter 1, The Eve of the War, opening paragraphs through the comparison with European extermination of Tasmanians
- [Morgan Library & Museum, The war of the worlds / by H.G. Wells](https://www.themorgan.org/printed-books/371751), Imprint and Notes

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