Henrique Alvim Corrêa's War of the Worlds 1906 — Surrender to the Martians
Decades before actual missile defense systems or SETI protocols, Wells and Corrêa imagined humanity's first response to superior alien technology as abject surrender — a prescient commentary on asymmetric warfare. In this urgent pen-and-ink sketch, a disheveled woman thrusts a white flag skyward, her expression caught between terror and desperate hope, as a panicked crowd surges behind her. Corrêa's loose, energetic linework conveys chaos with remarkable economy, making this one of the most emotionally raw plates in his celebrated 1906 Brussels edition of H.G. Wells's Martian invasion masterpiece.
This is early literary sci-fi illustration at its most humanistic — not the lurid spectacle of pulp covers but a quietly devastating moment of capitulation, capturing the existential horror of Wells's Martian invasion through raw human desperation rather than tentacled monsters.
“a. Corrêa”
