But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited?… Are we or they Lords of the World?… And how are all things made for man? —KEPLER (quoted in The Anatomy of Melancholy) Part 1 The Coming of the Martians Chapter1 The Eve of the War No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire o…