Although scientists have speculated about intelligent life on Mars, it comes as a complete surprise to England when Martians land, having been shot to Earth in flaming cylinders. At first the projectiles are mistaken for shooting stars or meteors. Then Ogilvy, the first to discover one of the cylinders that has landed, realizes that it is hollow; as it cools, he can hear something inside unscrewing the cylinder’s top. Ogilvy informs a local journalist, Henderson, and soon a crowd, including the narrator, gathers around the cylinder. The narrator suspects the object has come from Mars, but he does not think that it contains a living being. He and the crowd are shocked when grayish tentacles emerge from the cylinder. The crowd flees as the huge creature appears; it is the size of a bear, with a sheen like wet leather, two large, dark eyes, and a lipless mouth, heaving and pulsating. Just before the narrator runs away he catches sight of the monster’s large inhuman eyes and fungoid mass, which he finds disgusting and terrifying.

The humans decide to send a deputation (including Ogilvy and Henderson) to parlay with the Martians, since it seems that the Martians are intelligent even if human beings find them repulsive. The deputation, however, is wiped out in a blinding flash of fire and smoke, which the narrator later learns was the Martians’ heat ray. People panic; the narrator is stunned by the swiftness of the destruction.

The Martians begin to terrorize the cities and the countryside, dealing a silent and quick death to anyone in their way. For the first time it occurs to the narrator that the Martians mean to rule Earth, although he assures his wife that it seems unlikely that they will prevail, given that Earth’s gravitational pull on their bodies is three times that of Mars. Returning home, the narrator regains some of his confidence.

In London, the news from Woking seems so incredible that it is deemed a ruse. Even at Woking junction, where the trains still run, the Martian invasion is treated as a rumor and a curiosity, not a cause for evacuation. The narrator can hear the Martians hammering and stirring, making some sort of preparations. A company of soldiers is dispatched to form a cordon around the pit where the Martians’ cylinders landed. The Martians stay in the pit, but then the narrator, at home, sees one of his chimneys crack, and he realizes the power of the heat ray. He sends his terrified wife away to the town of Leatherhead. Out on the road, the narrator meets people escaping from the area of the pit. The Martians have set fire to everything within range of their heat ray.

The narrator then gets his first full view of a walking Martian or Martian machine of glittery metal, swinging its long, flexible tentacles. It has come out of the third of the ten Martian cylinders that landed on Earth. On the road the narrator encounters an artilleryman, the only survivor of an artillery clash with the Martians, who describes his fallen comrades as burnt meat. The destruction wrought by the Martians has been indiscriminate and universal, unprecedented in the history of warfare on Earth. The artilleryman decides to try to get to London to join the horse artillery there; the narrator opts to return to Leatherhead. The third cylinder blocks their way, however. Although the artillery does destroy one Martian, it proves ineffective against the heat ray, which obliterates everything in its path. The narrator just misses being killed as the foot of a Martian machine comes...