The Massacre of Mankind

Stephen Baxter's The Massacre of Mankind is the only sequel to H.G.Wells' The War of the Worlds authorized by the Wells estate. Baxter had previously written a sequel to The Time Machine - evidently the Wells estate is pleased with his work.

For what it's worth, so am I.

The sequel takes place 13 years after the events in Wells' novel. The narrator of this work, Julie Elphinstone is the sister-in-law of the narrator of the first novel - Walter Jenkins. Jenkins' name is not given in The War of the Worlds . I'm not sure how Baxter came to choose the name, but I suppose he had to have some name, after all.

Julie Elphinstone does make an appearance in the original novel, as do a number of other characters appearing in the sequel; her ex husband, Frank (brother to Walter), her younger sister-in-law, the "artillery man" Albert Cook and the widow of the astronomer Ogilvy to name a few. Also mentioned in the sequel are Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill and George Patton.

The novel is essentially an alternative history. The 1914 war between Germany and France takes place (with Germany the winner) although England and the U.S. do not enter the war. Julie Elphinstone travels from the U.S. to England aboard the RMS Lusitania which wasn't torpedoed by a German U-boat.

Baxter does a good job sticking to the view of the solar system as held by Percival Lowell and the "smart folk" of Wells' time. The descriptions of Mars, Venus and Jupiter are wrong by today's standards, but it suits perfectly to the feel of an H.G.Wells sequel.

You won't find any spoilers in this post. You can go elsewhere for that.

My only criticism of the sequel is the length. Baxter's sequel is nearly triple the number of pages in Wells' book......just a bit too long for my tastes, but overall a pretty good read.