Classic Stories: The War of the Worlds

经典故事:地球之战

Learning English Stories

2025-05-02

5 分钟
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Enjoy a classic story in English, and learn 13 uses of ‘fire’. FIND BBC LEARNING ENGLISH HERE: Visit our website ✔️ https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish Follow us https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/followus SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER: ✔️ https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/newsletters LIKE PODCASTS? Try some of our other popular podcasts including: ✔️ 6 Minute English ✔️ Learning English from the News ✔️ Learning English Conversations They're all available by searching in your podcast app
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  • Hello,

  • my name's Tim. Today's story was written at the turn of the 20th century and is one of the great classics of science fiction.

  • It's a fantastically imaginative story.

  • You might even say it's out of this world.

  • We begin in the English town of Woking.

  • The narrator, whose name we never learn,

  • is looking through a telescope with his friend Ogilvy and has just witnessed jets of gas firing off from Mars,

  • but is unaware of what this signifies.

  • Later, some sort of comet crashes into a nearby park.

  • He goes to investigate and finds a long metal cylinder buried in a large pit.

  • Ogilvy is there with a crowd of onlookers, all fired up with excitement.

  • The end of the cylinder begins to unscrew and tentacles emerge,

  • followed by a creature with a rounded body and large eyes.

  • The crowds retreat in horror as a strange rod-shaped machine rises from the pit.

  • Ogilvy approaches, but the rod begins to hiss.

  • before setting fire to the ground around him with an invisible heat ray.

  • It turns towards Ogilvy and he is vaporised.

  • The narrator escapes back home to his wife.

  • A military unit is dispatched to the crash site and a firefight breaks out.

  • The narrator sees neighbouring houses catch fire and realises his home is within range of the heat ray.