"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water." H.G. Wells's narrative of the invasion of the Earth by Martians was one of the earliest romantic science fiction novels to depict a conflict with an extraterrestrial race. Perhaps the most commented on novel in science fiction literature, it has remained a best seller since it was published and its popularity has inspired several films, radio dramas ( the most famous being the infamous Orson Wells hoax) and generations of science fiction writers.