这部H.G. Wells的masterpiece出版于1898年，是科幻小说的经典。故事是讲述火星人侵略地球（从故事观察者/叙述者的视角是侵略伦敦。）火星人的科技远远超过人类，人类无法抵抗。正当人类陷入绝境的时候，突然火星人全死了。原来火星人对地球的微生物完全没有免疫力。故事的叙述者以下这段感想我们在疫情当中读起来更有意义。
“and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians— DEAD!—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.
For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things—taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many— those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance —our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.”