Fighting machine (The War of the Worlds)

Fighting machine (The War of the Worlds)
The War of the Worlds character
Martian fighting machine and Thunder Child illustration by Henrique Alvim Corréa for the 1906 edition of the novel
First appearance	The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (1898)
Last appearance	The Great Martian War 1913–1917 (2013)
Created by	H.G. Wells
Information
Nickname(s)	Tripod, Martian Tripod, Martian Fighting Machine, Martian War Machine, Heron
Occupation	Military Vehicle

The Fighting Machine (also known as a Tripod) is one of the fictional machines used by the Martians in H. G. Wells' 1898 classic science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. It is a fast-moving, three-legged walker, reported to be 100 feet tall, with multiple whip-like tentacles used for grasping, and two lethal weapons: the heat-ray and a gun-like tube used for discharging canisters of a poisonous chemical black smoke that kills humans and animals. It is the primary machine the Martians use when they invade Earth, along with the handling machine, the flying machine, and the embankment machine.

The fighting machines walk on three tall, articulated legs and have a grouping of long, whip-like metallic tentacles hanging beneath the central body, a single flexible appendage holding the heat-ray projector, and atop the main body a brazen hood-like head that houses a single Martian operator. H. G. Wells first describes the fighting machines in detail in Chapter 10:

And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground? That was the impression those instant flashes gave. But instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand... Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere insensate machine driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which gripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange body. It picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a head looking about. Behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman's basket, and puffs of green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster swept by me.