Chapter Alien Intelligence of The War of the Worlds - Study Guide by H G Wells

The role of machinery is crucial in Wells' speculation about the Martian's evolution. At the time of writing, Homo sapiens was the only creature known to use tools, but Wells did not see this as protecting mankind from the influences of natural processes - indeed the interplay of organism and machinery has become such a crucial evolutionary force for Wells' Martians to the point that, with remarkable prescience, the author paints a picture of an almost bio-mechanical race. When watching from the ruined house, the Narrator sees " a sort of metallic spider with five jointed, agile legs, and with an extraordinary number of jointed levers, bars, and reaching and clutching tentacles about its body." He notes that "The motion was so swift, complex, and perfect that at first I did not see it as a machine, in spite of its metallic glitter. The fighting-machines were co-ordinated and animated to an extraordinary pitch, but nothing to compare with this. People who have never seen these structures.... scarcely realise that living quality... the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature of discs in an elastic sheath; these discs become polarised and drawn closely and powerfully together when traversed by a current of electricity." And not only have the machines become more lifelike, but the Martians themselves have taken the use of tools to its logical conclusion: "it was in the other artificial additions to their bodily resources, that their great superiority over man lay. We men, with our bicycles and road-skates, our Lilenthal soaring machines, our guns and sticks and so forth, are just the beginning of the evolution that the Martians have worked out. They have become practically more brains, wearing different bodies according to their needs just as men wear suits of clothes and take a bicycle in a hurry or an umbrella in the wet."