Henrique Alvim Corrêa's Heat-Ray Attack, War of the Worlds 1906
Originally published in the landmark 1906 Belgian edition of H.G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds,' this haunting illustration by Brazilian artist Henrique Alvim Corrêa captures a Martian fighting-machine unleashing its devastating heat-ray along Chobham Road. Towering tripods loom over rooftops as fleeing silhouetted figures scramble for survival amid smoke and sparks. Corrêa's scratchy, shadow-drenched draftsmanship renders the alien machinery with an unsettling organic menace that Wells himself enthusiastically praised.
This illustration sits firmly near the exploding-space-station end of the dial — towering alien war machines, a blazing heat-ray, panicked survivors, and crumbling buildings all crammed into one nightmarish tableau. Corrêa's expressionistic darkness elevates pure spectacle into something genuinely dread-inducing.
“The heat-ray in the Chobham Road.”
