One of the most innovative, groundbreaking, ambitious and expensive projects of its time, the making of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of The Worlds was almost as epic as the final work itself. In fact, the musical interpretation took nearly three times longer to create than the original novel did! But like Wells' original novel, the album's appeal has continued long after many of its imitators have faded into obscurity. For many people Jeff Wayne's album offers more than just 95 minutes of musical escapism; it offers an introduction to a literary world that might otherwise never be explored; a world in which fantastic interplanetary adventures are given life, nightmares become reality and a world in which even the craziest, most disturbing notions are feasible.

The story, which details 12 days in which invaders from Mars attack the planet Earth, captured popular imagination with its fast-paced narrative and images of Martians and interplanetary travel. The humans in The War of the Worlds initially treat the invasion with complacency but soon are provoked into a defensive state of war. The novel helped launch the career of actor and director Orson Wells when he presented an adaptation of it on his radio program, The Mercury Theatre on the Air, on October 30, 1938. The simulated news broadcast of a Martian landing in New Jersey, complete with regularly updated news bulletins, provoked panic in America, though of course exaggerated by the mead; it is testament to the greatness of Wells' fiction.