5 THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
THE WAR OF H. G. Wells THE WORLDS
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Will Earth survive?
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The cylinder opens and some very strange things start to come out. They are certainly Martians, and they don’t seem at all friendly. Then more and more cylinders arrive on Earth, and the war between the worlds has started.
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One night in early summer, a strange cylinder crashes into Earth. It lands near London, and scientists think that it has come from Mars.
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THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
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5 THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
H. G. Wells
Retold by Bill Bowler
graded readers
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Dados Internacionais de Catalogação na Publicação (CIP) (Câmara Brasileira do Livro, SP, Brasil) Wells, H. G. The war of the worlds: level 5: standfor graded readers / H. G. Wells; retold by Bill Bowler – 1. ed. – São Paulo : FTD, 2017. ISBN: 978-85-96-01102-0 (aluno) ISBN: 978-85-96-01103-7 (professor) 1. Inglês (Ensino fundamental) I. Bowler, Bill. II. Título. 17-04751
CDD-372.652 Índices para catálogo sistemático:
1. Inglês : Ensino fundamental
372.652
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THE WAR OF THE WORLDS Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) was born near London, England. The Wells family had a small shop, and Herbert’s father also earned a little money from playing cricket, but they were always poor. Wells had to leave school when he was fourteen, and worked in a shop for thirteen hours a day. However, he continued to find time to study, and, in 1884, he became a student at the Normal School of Science in London. After graduating, he worked for a while as a science teacher. His first book was a school textbook for biology. Wells published his first novel, The Time Machine, in 1895, and many of his early books were science fiction, including The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898). He is considered to be one of the fathers of science fiction, and he became one of the most successful novelists of his time.
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BEFORE READING
1
Look at the picture on the front of the book and read the back cover. Check the correct answers. 1. This story is about… a. people from Earth landing on the planet Mars. b. Martians landing on Earth. ü c. Martians landing on the planet Venus. d. the death of planet Earth. 2. The Martians in the story… a. travel around in six-legged machines. b. have slow brains and can’t think well. c. are very good at making machines. d. help to make our civilization better. 3. In the story,… a. the Martians take the city of London. b. human refugees travel to other planets. c. the British government makes peace with the Martians. d. the British army kills the Martians. 4. The story writer… a. leaves his wife in danger at the start of the war. b. takes his wife to stay with friends when the fighting begins. c. forgets all about his wife and becomes a soldier. d. loves his wife and hopes to find her again alive.
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Check the things that you think are in the story. the president
blood
a white flag
a Martian festival
a priest
the British queen
big guns
Martian fashions
a warship
a cough
Martian plants
Martian food
Chapter
1
Before the War
Nobody realized it, but at the end of the nineteenth century, highly intelligent creatures were watching us. Nobody on Earth thought about the dangers that could come from outside our planet. Most people believed that the chances of finding life on other planets were low. But across the great emptiness between the planets, cold and unfeeling creatures, with smarter brains than ours, looked at our world with greedy eyes. Slowly but surely, they made their plans against us. And in the early twentieth century, we learned the truth. The planet Mars is over two hundred million kilometers from the sun. It receives less than half the light and heat from the sun that we get on Earth. If scientists are right, and the furthest planets from our sun cooled first, then Mars is older than Earth. When our planet was still a soft ball of burning rock, life on our neighbor planet Mars probably started. Because it is small, it probably cooled very quickly to the perfect temperature for life to begin. Mars has air and water and everything that is needed to keep plants and animals alive. 5
The War of the Worlds
But humans could not see the facts in front of them. Until the end of the nineteenth century, few writers thought about life on Mars; and nobody wrote about it being possibly older and more intelligent than human life. Nor did people understand that – because Mars is further from the sun and smaller than Earth – it was nearer to the end of its life than our planet. Although plenty of things about life on the red planet are a mystery, we now know that during the summer, the temperature in the middle of the day is as cold as our coldest winter. The air on Mars is thinner than our air, and its once great oceans now cover only a third of the planet. In winter, heavy snow falls in the north and south. This later becomes water which covers much of its warmer land. Fighting against this weather has made Martian brains smarter, and their bodies stronger, and it has hardened their hearts. They look towards Earth, closer to the sun and warmer than their planet. Our world is green with plants and blue with water, and between the clouds they can see large areas of rich land with crowds of people, and narrow seas full of ships. We must seem foreign to them, lower animals. Their world is cold and not inviting. Our world is warm and full of life, but for them we are unintelligent creatures. For this reason, they planned a war with us. This was the only way they could escape the slow death of their planet. They chose when to land on Earth carefully. And before they arrived, they planned everything perfectly. Earlier in the nineteenth century, people noticed that the lines crossing Mars appeared and disappeared. But they failed to understand the reason. Isn’t it strange that over centuries we have thought of Mars as the planet of war? During those hundreds of years, it appears that the Martians were getting ready. In 1894, a great light was seen on the sunny side of Mars by many astronomers. I believe that the Martians were building the gun that they later used in their attack on Earth. Astronomers from Italy, America, and France all 6
Before the War | Chapter 1
studied the red planet, but none of them understood the dangers that it held for us. Six years ago, the war began. It happened when the distance between Earth and Mars was at its narrowest. At that time, the astronomer Lavelle noticed, just before midnight on May 12th, a sudden explosion on the planet. Shortly afterwards, he informed other astronomers that a large ball of burning gas was traveling very fast towards us. At around quarter past midnight the tail of the fire-ball suddenly disappeared. Lavelle explained excitedly, “It seemed that somebody was shooting a ball of fire from a gun.” His words were close to the truth, we discovered later.
The next day a newspaper reported the story. I heard about it through a friend living in the village of Ottershaw, the famous astronomer Ogilvy. He invited me to study the red planet with him the next evening. I remember it well. In the silent night, I looked up at Mars, so brilliant, small, and far away in the dark sky. But the night hid from me the Thing that they were sending to us. Nobody on Earth knew about that Thing, moving ever nearer. Nobody on Earth knew about the war, the fighting, and the death which that Thing contained. Those were still in our future. I got up to drink some water and Ogilvy watched in my place. At midnight, there was another explosion on Mars. Although we could not see it at the time, another dark missile had just started on its way towards Earth, only twenty-four hours after the first. At one o’clock, Ogilvy and I walked back to his house. He did not believe there was any intelligent life of Mars. “I suppose that those explosions are the result of a meteorite storm hitting the planet. Not Martians sending us a message,” he explained. Many people saw the gas explosion on Mars that night. The next night, at midnight, there was another similar explosion. 7