"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own . " And so H. G. Wells opened his thrilling The War of the Worlds in 1897. Since then millions of readers have shivered and shrieked at his depiction of a Martian invasion of Earth. The tale has become part of our cultural memory, but Wells didn't tell the whole story. He never gave us the Martian side of the conflict. Now, Joseph Dougherty, the Emmy-winning writer, reports on the invasion of Earth from an up-close-and-personal Martian point of view.

Dougherty views Wells's epic battles from an all new, painfully modern perspective. Our narrator is Vvv, a reluctant conscript on board The First Cylinder to reach Earth in the invasion. Vvv is the Martian incarnation of all reluctant warriors, from Yossarian in Catch-22 to Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five. War is hell . for aliens and humans alike. Sardonic and heartrending, tragic and comic, The First Cylinder is a breakout science fiction novel in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury.