Fighting machine (The War of the Worlds) the machines of Wells' novel. The fighting machines walk upon legs (four legs instead of three) and carry a weapon above their head on a neck, resembling the Martian heat-ray from George Pal's 1953 film adaptation. Fighting machine (The War of the Worlds) The Fighting Machine (also known as "Tripod") is one of the fictional machines used by the Martians in H.G. Wells' 1898 classic science fiction novel "The War of the Worlds". It is a fast-moving, three-legged walker, reported to be 100 feet tall, with multiple whip-like tentacles used for grasping, and two lethal weapons: the heat-ray and a
The War of the Worlds of the Worlds" presents itself as a factual account of the Martian invasion. The narrator is a middle-class writer of philosophical papers, somewhat reminiscent of Doctor Kemp in "The Invisible Man", with characteristics similar to author Wells at the time of writing. The reader learns very little about the background of the narrator or indeed of anyone else in the novel; characterisation is unimportant. In fact none of the principal characters are named, aside from the astronomer Ogilvy. Wells trained as a science teacher during the latter half of the 1880s. One of his teachers was T. H. Huxley, famous