The War of the Worlds
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
50 free The War of the Worlds trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The War of the Worlds was published in 1898 and has stayed in print ever since. H. G. Wells dropped an alien army into the quiet commuter country south-west of London and described the result with the calm of an eyewitness report, and almost every invasion story since has borrowed from it. This quiz covers the novel first: how the invasion begins, the machines and weapons the Martians bring, the people the narrator meets on the road, and how it all ends. Further questions look at where the story came from, including the Victorian science and politics behind it, and at its long afterlife on radio, in cinemas and on record. It suits anyone revising the book for English class, book clubs, science fiction fans and quiz hosts who want a literature round with a twist. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the details stick even where you had to guess.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What finally kills the Martian invaders in The War of the Worlds after every human weapon has failed?
Bacteria
Bacteria finish the Martians because their own world has none, so they arrive with no defence against earthly disease. The narrator finds them lying dead beside their machines.
Q 02Which 23-year-old director's 1938 radio play of The War of the Worlds convinced some listeners Martians had landed?
Orson Welles
Orson Welles apologised at a hastily called press conference the next morning, and no punitive action followed. The publicity brought him to national attention.
Q 03Which American magazine, later a women's fashion title, serialised The War of the Worlds in 1897?
Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan was a general literary monthly when it ran the Martian invasion, decades before it turned into a women's magazine. British readers followed the same serial in Pearson's Magazine.
Q 04Which American inventor leads Earth's counter-attack on Mars in an unauthorised 1898 sequel to The War of the Worlds?
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison is the hero of Edison's Conquest of Mars, a Boston Post serial by astronomer Garrett Serviss. It sends the inventor to fight the Martians on their own soil.
Q 05Which basic human invention is entirely absent from the Martians' machines in The War of the Worlds?
The wheel
The wheel appears nowhere in anything the Martians bring to Earth, which the narrator finds astonishing. Their machines run on sliding parts and a kind of artificial muscle instead.
Q 06Which director made the 2005 film War of the Worlds, telling the invasion through one fleeing family?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg had made aliens lovable in E.T., but said the plight of these survivors reflected his own unease after the September 11 attacks.
Q 07Which detail about the narrator of The War of the Worlds does H. G. Wells withhold for the entire novel?
His name
His name is never given, and neither is that of the younger brother whose escape from London fills several chapters. Readers learn only that the narrator writes on philosophy and lives in Surrey.
Q 08How did H. G. Wells travel around Surrey choosing places for his Martians to destroy in The War of the Worlds?
By bicycle
By bicycle, usually in the mornings, the newly married author toured the lanes, then wrote in the afternoons. He later said he had been marking down places and people for destruction.
Q 09On the eve of which holiday did the 1938 radio dramatisation of The War of the Worlds alarm American listeners?
Halloween
Halloween fell the next day, and the Mercury Theatre on the Air went out live on 30 October as its episode for the season. Many American stations replay the programme as a yearly tradition.
Q 10What do the Martians take from the living captives they collect in The War of the Worlds?
Blood
Blood is their only food, since the Martians have no digestive organs at all. The narrator watches them feed through a gap in a ruined house and can hardly bear to describe it.
Q 11On which Surrey heath does the first Martian cylinder land at the start of The War of the Worlds?
Horsell Common
Horsell Common is real heathland, and its sandpit is the spot the story picks for the landing. The author lived close by and knew the ground from his daily outings.
Q 12What does the narrator call the invisible beam that kills the peaceful deputation in The War of the Worlds?
The Heat-Ray
The Heat-Ray is thought to be made in a sealed chamber and is aimed with a polished mirror, much as a lighthouse throws its beam. It works in silence, so its first victims simply burst into flame.
Q 13Which Royal Navy torpedo ram charges the Martian tripods to save a fleet of refugee ships in The War of the Worlds?
Thunder Child
Q 21Which poisonous weapon do the Martians launch in canisters to smother hidden artillery in The War of the Worlds?
The Black Smoke
The Black Smoke is a heavy vapour that sinks into valleys and kills whatever breathes it, and the Martians clear it afterwards with jets of steam. It turns the flight from London into a rout.
Q 22Which fast-growing Martian plant chokes the rivers of southern England in The War of the Worlds before rotting away?
Red weed
Red weed spreads wherever it finds water, damming the Wey and the Thames into shallow floods. The starving narrator gnaws some of its fronds and finds a sickly, metallic taste.
Q 23Which Surrey town, where H. G. Wells was living as he wrote The War of the Worlds, do the Martians destroy first?
Woking
Thunder Child fells one fighting machine and, already ablaze, crashes into a second, buying time for the steamers to reach open sea. The ironclad is destroyed in the attempt.
Q 14What is the occupation of the despairing man trapped with the narrator in a ruined house in The War of the Worlds?
Curate
Curate is all the story ever calls this junior clergyman, and his loud despair almost betrays their hiding place beside a Martian pit. The narrator finally knocks him senseless to silence him.
Q 15At which north London landmark does the narrator find the Martians lying dead at the end of The War of the Worlds?
Primrose Hill
Primrose Hill holds the last and largest camp the Martians built, and the narrator climbs towards it expecting to be killed. He finds birds picking at the bodies instead.
Q 16Which condition on Earth, three times stronger than on Mars, makes the invaders clumsy in The War of the Worlds?
Gravity
Gravity makes each Martian weigh three times what it does at home, so the first observers judge them helpless. Their walking machines soon solve the problem.
Q 17What does the doomed deputation wave as it approaches the first Martian cylinder in The War of the Worlds?
A white flag
A white flag is chosen on the theory that the Martians, being intelligent, will read it as a signal from intelligent creatures. The astronomers leading the party are among the first people killed.
Q 18What do onlookers first take the Martian cylinder to be as it crosses the night sky in The War of the Worlds?
A falling star
A falling star is what hundreds of people assume they have seen, and an astronomer sets out next morning to look for a meteorite. He finds a great metal cylinder sunk in the sand.
Q 19Why do the Martians invade Earth, as the opening chapter of The War of the Worlds explains?
Their world is dying
Their world is dying of cold: older than Earth and farther from the sun, it has thin air and oceans shrunk to a third of its surface. The narrator pictures them gazing at a warmer, greener neighbour.
Q 20Which family member does the narrator of The War of the Worlds find alive at his home as the story ends?
His wife
His wife appears at the window with a cousin just as he is giving up hope in the empty house, each having counted the other among the dead.
Woking was the author's home from 1895, and the story wrecks it within two days of the landing. A seven-metre tripod sculpture has stood near the railway station since 1998.
Q 24Where does the artilleryman on Putney Hill propose that survivors hide and rebuild in The War of the Worlds?
In the main drains
In the main drains, he says, with cellars and railway tunnels besides, a hardy remnant could breed, learn and one day seize a fighting machine. After a short spell of digging he prefers cards and champagne.
Q 25How do the Martians send their cylinders to Earth in The War of the Worlds, an idea borrowed from Jules Verne?
From a huge gun
From a huge gun sunk in a pit on Mars, each cylinder is shot out in a jet of flaming gas that astronomers can see. A flash appears around midnight on ten nights running.
Q 26Which sea creature do the grey, tentacled Martians most resemble once they crawl out in The War of the Worlds?
An octopus
An octopus is the comparison a soldier reaches for on hearing them described: each Martian is a round, bear-sized head with sixteen whip-like tentacles in two bunches around its mouth.
Q 27How do the sexless Martians reproduce in The War of the Worlds, as a young one born during the invasion shows?
By budding
By budding, as a lily bulb or a freshwater polyp does: the young Martian was found still partly joined to its parent. The narrator adds that the invaders never sleep.
Q 28What is the narrator's younger brother doing in London when the invasion begins in The War of the Worlds?
Studying medicine
Studying medicine for an exam kept him so busy that he heard nothing of the landing until Saturday morning. His flight with two women in a pony chaise shows the capital emptying in panic.
Q 29To which Surrey town does the narrator drive by hired dog cart for safety with cousins in The War of the Worlds?
Leatherhead
Leatherhead lies about twelve miles from the narrator's house, far enough to seem safe. Driving back that night to return the cart, he meets his first fighting machine in a violent storm.
Q 30Which astronomer lets the narrator watch Mars through a telescope at Ottershaw in The War of the Worlds?
Ogilvy
Ogilvy insists the odds against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one, then becomes the first person to reach the cylinder. He dies with the deputation sent to greet its occupants.