One early morning, a "falling star" descends over England as it crashes on Horsell Common, near our hero's home in Maybury. As he makes his way there, a group of people had arrived and surrounded a large cylindrical object embedded in a sandpit. After observing it for some time, the narrator returns to his home. However, by the time he comes back to the crash site, the number of spectators has grown, significantly. This time, nonetheless, as he tries to make sense of the situation, he gets his first glimpse of a monstrous creature that uses its tentacles to get out of this object... a Martian.