Eli Bendersky's website The first book I read completely on my new Palm - yay !
War of the worlds tells a story of a martian invasion to earth. Not earth of today, mind you, but earth of ~1900 when the most powerful weapons humanity had were cannons and dynamite.
This "outdatedness" shows well throughout the book and hurts the reading experience quite a bit. I bet it was very exciting to read 100 years ago, but now I just can't "connect" to England as the greatest world power trying to shell martian vessels from horse-drawn cannons :-)
The story is telt from the 1st person view ("I went, I did") which is quite unusual. I didn't really like this style, it feels a bit amateurish, imho. What I did like is the author's philosophical detours into evolution, humanity vs. lower species, and presumable higher species vs. humanity.
All in all I wouldn't recommend this book. It was probably fresh, exciting Sci Fi 100 years ago. But now, in the post-Foundation era, people would enjoy other things far more.