H.G. Wells "The War of the Worlds" Limited Edition Bonus Material Booklet [Sealed]

The Ultimate War of the Worlds Companion: Own the Rare 112-Page Bonus Booklet Separately!

Suntup Editions 2020. H.G. Wells "The War of the Worlds". Limited Edition. Supplementary Booklet. This 112-page bonus booklet was originally included with the Suntup Editions limited edition release of this novel. It features a collection of historical and supplementary content. Sealed.

Contents of the Bonus Booklet

• "The Crystal Egg": H.G. Wells' short story often viewed as a thematic precursor to The War of the Worlds.
• "The Things That Live on Mars": An article written by H.G. Wells originally published in Cosmopolitan.
• 1938 Radio Broadcast Script: Orson Welles' famous Mercury Theatre radio script adaptation.
• Newspaper Reprint: A reproduction of the front-page headline from the Boston Daily Globe regarding the 1938 broadcast.
• Henrique Alvim Corrêa Drawings: Reproductions of 32 classic illustrations by the artist.
• Jeff Wayne Art: Artwork and visual material from Jeff Wayne's musical version of The War of the Worlds.

What Makes This Booklet Essential:

• The Complete 1038 Radio Script: The exact broadcast script by Orson Welles that caused nationwide panic.

• Rare Historical Art: 32 famous drawings by Henrique Alvim Corrêa plus iconic art from Jeff Wayne's musical version.

• The Deep History: Includes Wells’ rare Cosmopolitan article "The Things That Live on Mars" and the essential prequel short story, "The Crystal Egg".

Edition Details

• Length: 112 pages (with a letterpress-printed jacket in the official releases).

• Availability: This book was originally included with both the Lettered (limited to 26 copies) and Numbered (limited to 250 copies) editions published in 2020

• 6" x 9" trim size. 

• Softcover Wraps

The War of the Worlds

The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells, first serialised in 1897 by Pearson's Magazine in the UK and by Cosmopolitan magazine in the US. The novel's first appearance in hardcover was in 1898 from publisher William Heinemann of London. Written between 1895 and 1897, it is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between mankind and an extra-terrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of both an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and of his younger brother in London as southern England is invaded by Martians. The novel is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon.

The plot has been related to invasion literature of the time. The novel has been variously interpreted as a commentary on evolutionary theory, British imperialism, and generally Victorian superstitions, fears, and prejudices. Wells said that the plot arose from a discussion with his brother Frank about the catastrophic effect of the British on indigenous Tasmanians. What would happen, he wondered, if Martians did to Britain what the British had done to the Tasmanians? At the time of publication, it was classified as a scientific romance, like Wells's earlier novel The Time Machine.

The War of the Worlds has been both popular (having never been out of print) and influential, spawning half a dozen feature films, radio dramas, a record album, various comic book adaptations, a number of television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. It was most memorably dramatised in a 1938 radio programme directed by and starring Orson Welles that allegedly caused public panic among listeners who did not know the Martian invasion was fictional. The novel has even influenced the work of scientists, notably Robert H. Goddard, who, inspired by the book, helped develop both the liquid-fuelled rocket and multistage rocket, which resulted in the Apollo 11 Moon landing 71 years later.

H.G. Wells

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called the "father of science fiction", along with Jules Verne and the publisher Hugo Gernsback.

During his own lifetime, however, he was most prominent as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. A futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web. His science fiction imagined time travel, alien invasion, invisibility, and biological engineering. Brian Aldiss referred to Wells as the "Shakespeare of science fiction". 

Wells rendered his works convincing by instilling commonplace detail alongside a single extraordinary assumption – dubbed “Wells's law” – leading Joseph Conrad to hail him in 1898 as "O Realist of the Fantastic!". His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898) and the military science fiction The War in the Air (1907). Wells was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.

Wells's earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context.[9] He was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote little science fiction, while he sometimes indicated on official documents that his profession was that of journalist. Novels such as Kipps and The History of Mr Polly, which describe lower-middle-class life, led to the suggestion that he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens, but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted, in Tono-Bungay (1909), a diagnosis of English society as a whole. Wells was a diabetic and co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association (known today as Diabetes UK) in 1934.