Flying machine (The War of the Worlds)

The Flying machine is one of the fictional machines used by the Martians in H. G. Wells' classic science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. It is one of the four types of heavy machine the Martians bring with them when they invade Earth, along with the fighting machine, the handling machine, and the embankment machine.

The appearance of this aircraft in the novel is very vague. The narrator's brother, escaping by sea, glimpses it shortly after the implied destruction of the Channel Fleet. The narrator himself sees the aircraft abandoned on the ground in London, and believes it experimental, until he reads otherwise in a post-invasion issue of the Daily Mail. It is implied the aircraft was used to dispense the black smoke, but there is no clear confirmation of this in the text. In the original Pearson's Magazine serialized version, Wells gave more information:

It has often been asked why the Martians did not fly immediately after their arrival. They certainly did use a flying apparatus for several days, but only for brief flights of a score or so of miles, in order to reconnoitre and spread their black powder... The fact remains that they did not fly fifty miles from London all through the war. Had they done so, then the destruction they would have caused would have been infinitely greater than it was, though it could not have averted the end, of course, even by a day.

It is not known whether this version is considered canon, having only appeared, as noted, in the original magazine serialization; Wells re-edited portions of the novel before it was first published in 1898 as a hardcover book.

The appearance of the machine has only so far been depicted once on screen in Pendragon Pictures H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, where it makes an appearance after the battle with the HMS Thunder Child, which is later recounted from the perspective of the artilleryman.

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