Stephen Baxter to write Massacre of Mankind, the sequel to HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds

It looks like War of Worlds id getting a sequel… 

Gollancz are publishing a sequel to one of the most famous and influential SF books ever – The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells.  Massacre of Mankind is written by the multi-award-winning co-author of The Long Earth novels with Terry Pratchett, Stephen Baxter.

First published in 1897,The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells has been both popular (having never gone out of print) and influential, spawning half a dozen feature films, radio dramas, a record album, various comic book adaptations, and a television series.

In Stephen Baxter’s terrifying sequel, set in late 1920s London, the Martians return, and the war begins again. But the aliens do not repeat the mistakes of their last invasion. They know how they lost last time. They target Britain first, since we resisted them last time. The massacre of mankind has begun.

Steve Baxter said: “HG Wells is the daddy of modern SF. He drew on deep traditions, for instance of scientific horror dating back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and fantastic voyages such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). And he had important near-contemporaries such as Jules Verne. But Wells did more than any other writer to shape the form and themes of modern science fiction, and indeed through his wider work exerted a profound influence on the history of the twentieth century. Now it’s an honour for me to celebrate his enduring imaginative legacy, more than a hundred and fifty years after his birth.”

The Massacre of Mankind will be published in hardback, £20, and eBook, £19.99, on the 19th January 2017.