Machine de combat martienne touchée par un obus
1906
Henrique Alvim Corrêa created this terrifying scene for the 1906 Belgian edition of H.G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds,' capturing the exact moment a Martian fighting machine takes a direct hit. The towering tripod, with its snake-like tentacles flailing as its dome explodes, looks like it stepped right out of a nightmare while tiny soldiers scatter in panic below. Corrêa was only 24 when he drew this, and his vivid imagination captured the horror of humanity facing superior technology so well that Wells himself praised the illustrations. Sadly, the artist died of tuberculosis just a few years later at age 30, leaving behind a legacy that still influences sci-fi art today.