Henrique Alvim Corrêa – War of the Worlds Heat-Ray Victims, 1906
Startlingly visceral for an Edwardian book illustration, this pen-and-ink rendering depicts the first human casualties of the Martian heat-ray with an expressionistic ferocity rarely seen in 1906 print work. Contorted bodies are strewn across a rubble-strewn hillside while columns of black smoke billow skyward, and a lonely tower with circular windows looms silhouetted against a lurid, smoldering sky. Corrêa's loose, scratchy linework transforms scientific horror into something almost nightmarish.
For a 1906 book illustration, this is aggressively grim — charred bodies, annihilating rays, and a tower that looks genuinely haunted. Wells approved of Corrêa's work, which is the Victorian equivalent of a five-star Yelp review for catastrophic alien violence.
“The first victims of the Martian heat-ray.”
