Warwick Goble's Martian Devastation – War of the Worlds 1897

This illustration grimly predicted asymmetric warfare — a technologically superior force reducing humanity to fleeing silhouettes — though Wells and Goble imagined tripods rather than drones. Two tiny human figures are dwarfed by a scorched, cratered landscape of smoldering earth and shattered tree roots, one figure standing atop a ridge in helpless silhouette, another crouching below amid the burning wreckage. Goble's moody chiaroscuro captures the Martian heat-ray's aftermath with unsettling realism.