Power is at the core of the action in The War of the Worlds. Until the Martians appear, humans—and the English in particular—feel quite firmly in possession of power, while, in order to fulfill their ambitions, the Martians flaunt their apparently far superior strength without mercy. Individual characters, such as the narrator and the artilleryman, are trapped in their own delusions of power even as their helplessness is made painfully and repeatedly clear to them. In the end, with the apparently indomitable reign of the Martians suddenly ended by the humblest of organisms, Wells asserts that all power is ephemeral at best and fundamentally a mirage.

Preceding the coming of the Martians, humanity in general and the English in particular have held power so firmly and for so long that, as the novel’s very opening line makes clear, “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” (5). Despite mounting evidence that the Martians have not come in peace and that their technology is immensely superior to humanity’s, the narrator continues to believe human victory is inevitable even after the Martians nearly kill him.