Flying machine (The War of the Worlds) far been depicted once on screen in Pendragon Pictures "H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds", where it makes an appearance after the battle with , which is later recounted from the perspective of the artilleryman. However, it appeared briefly in the live adaptation of "Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds", though the album itself does not make any reference to the flying machine. Many more of them appeared in the "New Generation" version of the stage show. Viewed edge on, the roughly boomerang-shaped war machines of George Pal's 1953 film, which bear no resemblance to
The War of the Worlds infrastructure such as armament stores, railways, and telegraph lines; it appears to be intended to cause maximum casualties, leaving humans without any will to resist. These tactics became more common as the twentieth century progressed, particularly during the 1930s with the development of mobile weapons and technology capable of surgical strikes on key military and civilian targets. Wells's vision of a war bringing total destruction without moral limitations in "The War of the Worlds" was not taken seriously by readers at the time of publication. He later expanded these ideas in the novels "When the Sleeper Wakes" (1899), "The War