Wells opens The War of the Worlds with an explicit comparison: the Martians' treatment of humanity is no different from Europeans' treatment of the Tasmanians, whom they had exterminated. The novel is a deliberate inversion of imperial adventure fiction — the heat rays, the black smoke, the refugee columns fleeing London are the mirror image of what British forces were doing in Africa, India, and the Pacific. Written between 1895 and 1897, during the Scramble for Africa and at the height of British imperial expansion, and published in 1898, Wells used science fiction to force his readers to inhabit the position of the colonized. This episode examines how the novel's geography — the destruction of Surrey and London, the imperial capital brought low — makes its anti-imperial argument viscerally felt, and how the novel continues to be read through colonial and post-colonial lenses.
SPOILERS! Please note that due to the nature of this podcast, each episode describes a novel in detail, including plot spoilers.
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