War of the Worlds: Goliath

Did You Know?

• Retro Rocket Press published an official novelization by Adam J. Whitlatch on 28 October 2014.
• The novelization was taken out of print with the closing of KHP in late 2015.
• Latchkey Press republished the novelization on 31 July 2018, marking its first publication in paperback.

Plot

The Martians attacked Earth without warning in 1899, killing 140 million people and leveling many major cities. In the ruined city of Leeds, England, ten-year-old Eric Wells hid with his parents inside a destroyed church while a Martian Tripod moved through the area. When they tried to flee, the Tripod saw them and fired its heat ray. They barely escaped the first blast. Eric stood frozen in terror as the Tripod fired again, killing his father as he rushed to shield him, then his mother. Before the machine could kill Eric, it suddenly died. Earth's bacteria proved lethal to the Martians, and the Tripod toppled forward, crashing in front of him.

Fifteen years later, in 1914, Eric arrived at the Manhattan headquarters of the A.R.E.S. (Allied Resistance Earth Squadrons). The world had become a dieselpunk and steampunk landscape, built on reverse-engineered Martian technology. At an assembly of two thousand soldiers from across the globe, Russian General Sergei Kushnirov—who lost his family in St. Petersburg to the Martians in 1899—presided alongside Secretary of War Theodore Roosevelt and Professor Nikola Tesla. Tesla explained the first failed invasion and the founding of A.R.E.S., then shocked everyone by revealing he had intercepted military codes from Mars, suggesting the Martians were planning a second attack. Eric and his team—American Lieutenant Jennifer Carter, Irish Corporal Patrick O'Brien, Canadian Sergeant Abraham Douglas, and Malayan Lieutenant Raja Iskandar Shah—received the first Achilles-class Battle Tripod, a sixty-five-foot steam-powered machine armed with heavy machine guns, six light rockets, a heat ray, and an 88 mm cannon. Eric named it 'The Goliath.' As the crew prepared for a simulated war game against Japanese Captain Sakai, a barroom brawl nearly broke out after a German soldier insulted Roosevelt. Sergei arrived with news: Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated in Sarajevo, threatening the A.R.E.S. alliance.