War of the Worlds E-Book

Herbert George Wells

• Herausgeber: Ernst Klett Sprachen GmbH
• Kategorie: Fremdsprachen
• Serie: Real Reads
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 38

Beschreibung

Niemand hätte in den letzten Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts geglaubt, dass unser Planet Erde aus der Ferne beobachtet wurde. Aber die Erde wurde nicht nur beobachtet - bald schon wurde sie von Kreaturen vom Planeten Mars besetzt. Technologisch weit überlegen brachten sie mit ihren Maschinen Tod und Zerstörung über die Menschheit: Hitzestrahlen, Giftgas und gigantische Fortbewegungsapparate ließen dem Widerstand kaum eine Chance. Wie sollte man eine solche Armee aufhalten? Ein Überlebender erzählt seine nervenaufreibende Geschichte vom ersten Kontakt mit den Marsianern bis zur Zerstörung Londons. Lektüre mit Illustrationen, Annotationen und Hörbuch, GER: A2/B1 Themen: Horror, Science Fiction, Widerstand

Leseprobe

1. Auflage (0001/2013)

Das Werk und seine Teile sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Nutzung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen Fällen bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Einwilligung des Verlags. Hinweis zu § 52 a UrhG: Weder das Werk noch seine Teile dürfen ohne eine solche Einwilligung in das Internet oder ein Netzwerk eingestellt werden. Dies gilt auch für Intranets von Schulen und sonstigen Bildungseinrichtungen. Ein weiterer kommerzielle Gebrauch oder die Weiterleitung an Dritte sind nicht gestattet.

This edition of The War of the Worlds is published by arrangement with Real Reads Ltd.

© der Originalausgabe: by Real Reads Ltd, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK

www.realreads.co.uk

Text copyright © Eric Brown 2008

Illustrations copyright © Felix Bennett 2008

First published in 2008

© Ernst Klett Sprachen GmbH, Rotebühlstrße 77, 70178 Stuttgart 2013. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Internetadresse: www.klett.de / www.lektueren.com

Annotationen und Übungen: Joanne Popp

Redaktion: Don Haupt

Illustrationen: Felix Bennett

Gestaltung und Satz: Vor- und Nachname, Firmenname mit Ort

Umschlaggestaltung: Elmar Feuerbach

Titelgrafik: Felix Bennett

ISBN 978-3-12-909011-4

CONTENTS

The Characters

The War of the Worlds

Taking things further

THE CHARACTERS

The narrator

The narratorwitnesses a Martian invasion. Can he escape their aggression? Will his life ever be the same again?

The narrator’s Wife

The narrator’s wife flees to the nearby town of Leatherhead, but is that far enough? Will they ever see each other again?

The curate

The curate is a terrified man. Will his fear put both him and the narrator in even greater danger?

The artilleryman

The artilleryman is a fine soldier. Can the human race depend upon such men to defeat the invaders?

Ogilvy

Ogilvy is one of the first men to greet the Martians. Will he live to tell the tale?

The Martians

Escaping their own dying planet, the Martians want to settle on earth. Can they live in harmony with us, or must the human race fight to survive? How do you kill a Martian?

Ihr Reader unterstützt keine Audio-Wiedergabe.

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

No one would have believed at the end of the nineteenth century that planet earth was being watched by beings more intelligent than humankind, who regarded our planet with envy and were drawing up plans against us. The planet Mars, I will remind you, orbits the sun at a distance of one hundred and forty million miles. It has air and water and all that is necessary to support life. And yet over the millennia the planet has cooled, its air has thinned, and its oceans diminished. Mars is a slowly dying world. The Martians, gazing acquisitively across the gulf of space, watched our own warm and watery planet – and planned invasion.

One night six years ago, astronomers on earth beheld a huge explosion of gas upon the surface of Mars. Their instruments indicated a mass of flame moving towards the earth at great speed.

The newspapers paid little attention, so most people on earth remained ignorant of one of the greatest dangers that has ever threatened the human race.

The next night, through the telescope of my astronomer friend Ogilvy, I saw the phenomenon with my own eyes. For the next ten nights, at exactly the same time, we and many other observers saw the same thing happen. A flaming mass heading towards earth, one each night.

Although I watched in fascination, I did not for one moment dream that Martians had fired missiles towards us, and that these missiles were now hurtling through space at thousands of miles a second, getting nearer and nearer. I did not even begin to consider that these flames would bring so much calamity and death to the earth. Each night, I returned home from Ogilvy’s observatory to my comfortable home and my loving wife. Everything seemed so safe and tranquil.

Then came the night of the first falling star, a line of flame high up in the atmosphere. Below, hundreds of thousands of people in London and the Surrey countryside were sleeping in peace.

Convinced that a meteorite had landed on the common, Ogilvy rose early the next morning and strode out to investigate. On the grassy hillside, he found that a huge hole had been blasted violently into the earth, with sand and gravelflung in every direction. In places, the heather was on fire.

Then he saw the thing itself, half buried in the pit