The book was written in two parts: The Coming of the Martians, which details the Martians' landing and conquering; and The Earth Under the Martians, which is a post-apocalyptic account of the Martians' reign and their subsequent vanquishing by microbes which they are unprepared for. Mars, and the possibility of life on it, had apparently intrigued Wells for some time. In an interesting aside, as Bernard Bergonzi notes in his Early H. G. Wells,
the author also had some fun writing scenes in which the aliens destroyed characters modeled on his neighbors. Adapted by Orson Welles and Howard Koch for the notorious 1938 Halloween radio broadcast, this story sent hundreds of frenzied families onto the highways in an attempt to escape the alien threat.
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