Martian Heat-Ray Beams Strike London — War of the Worlds 1906 Corrêa

Created around 1906 for the Belgian edition of H.G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds,' this engraving captures the Martian heat-ray bombardment of London with stunning drama. At the precise moment illustrated fiction was redefining catastrophe for a new century, Henrique Alvim Corrêa rendered multiple converging energy beams scorching the Thames skyline — dome of St. Paul's visible — in meticulous crosshatched ink, combining Victorian scientific anxiety with apocalyptic grandeur.