“The Massacre of Mankind“, a sequel to H.G. Wells’s “The War of the Worlds” will be published in January 2017 when the copyright on the original expires.
Written by Stephen Baxter, “The Massacre of Mankind” will see the Martians from Wells’s story invading Earth once more, having learned from the mistakes they made first time around. An official sequel to H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds”, published 118 years after the original story, will join the catalogue of classic fiction given fresh life by contemporary authors.
First published in 1897, “The War of the Worlds” has spawned half a dozen feature films, a famous Orson Welles radio drama which created a national panic in the US and a hit record album and stage production adapted by Jeff Wayne.
Baxter promises that his sequel, “The Massacre of Mankind“, will tell an equally terrifying tale. Set in late 1920s London, the Martians return, and the war begins again. But the aliens do not repeat the mistakes of their last invasion. They know their vulnerability to microbial infections caused their demise last time. They target Britain first, since this nation led the resistance but “the massacre of mankind has begun.”
Gollancz will publish the sequel in hardback (£20/ 27,76EUR) and eBook (£19.99/ 27,75EUR) on 19 January 2017. The paperback will cost £14.99 (20,81EUR) and the Kindle edition, £9.99 (13.87EUR).
The copyright on the original, which was published in book form in 1898, lasts until 31 December 2016.
In a statement, Stephen Baxter said it was “an honour… to celebrate [Wells’s] enduring imaginative legacy, more than 150 years after his birth.”
The author of more than 20 novels previously penned “The Time Ships”, a sequel to Wells’s 1895 story “The Time Machine”.
Stephen Baxter said:
“H.G. Wells is the daddy of modern SF. He drew on deep traditions, for instance of scientific horror dating back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and fantastic voyages such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. And he had important near-contemporaries such as Jules Verne. But Wells did more than any other writer to shape the form and themes of modern science fiction, and indeed through his wider work exerted a profound influence on the history of the twentieth century. Now it’s an honour for me to celebrate his enduring imaginative legacy, more than a hundred and fifty years after his birth.”
“Stephen Baxter has a great track record of collaborating with other authors. I’ve seen early material from this remarkable new project and can’t wait to unleash Steve’s new Martian terror upon the world.”, said Marcus Gipps, commissioning editor at Gollancz.
