Robert Silverberg - The Martian Invasion Journals of Henry James

“Of course it would, of necessity,” he said. I smiled expressively and said nothing. And then, quickly divining my meaning, he added: “But of course I would yield, cher maître , if it were your intention to—”

“It is,” I said serenely.

He was quite graceful about it, all in all. And so I will set to work tomorrow. The Ambassadors may perhaps be the grandest and finest of my novels, but it will have to wait another year or two, I suppose, for there is something much more urgent that must be written first.

[James’s notebooks indicate that he did not actually begin work on his classic novel of interplanetary conflict, The War of the Worlds , until the 28th of July, 1900. The book was finished by the 17th of November, unusually quickly for James, and after serialization in The Atlantic Monthly (August-December, 1901) was published in England by Macmillan and Company in March, 1902 and in the United States by Harper & Brothers one month later. It has remained his most popular book ever since and has on three occasions been adapted for motion pictures. Wells never did write an account of his experiences during the Martian invasion, though those experiences did, of course, have a profound influence on his life and work thereafter.

—The Editor.]