Henrique Alvim Corrêa's Heat-Ray Crowd Scene – War of the Worlds 1906
Unlike the more detached, architectural Martian illustrations of contemporaries like Warwick Goble, Corrêa's work pulses with visceral human terror. This halftone pen-and-ink plate from the 1906 Belgian edition of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds captures the Martians' heat-ray obliterating a fleeing crowd in a blinding flash of light. Bodies are flung skyward, silhouetted figures scatter in panic, and the searing beam cuts diagonally across the composition with brutal kinetic force — among the most dramatically charged illustrations Wells' novel ever received.
The diagonal heat-ray slicing through a mass of screaming, airborne bodies is pure visceral spectacle — the kind of image that would freeze a browser mid-scroll. Corrêa's dramatic chiaroscuro makes this one of the most electrifying Martian invasion images ever committed to ink.
“The Martians' heat-ray disperses the crowd.”
