The War of the Worlds had its genesis in the attempted genocide of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people. In a 1920 interview with Strand magazine, H. G. Wells attributed the idea of the book to a remark of his brother Frank, to whom he dedicated the novel. They had been talking ‘of the discovery of Tasmania by the Europeans—a very frightful disaster for the native Tasmanians’. ‘We were walking together through some particularly peaceful Surrey scenery. “Suppose some beings from another planet were to drop out of the sky suddenly,” said he, “and begin laying about them here!”’
