War of the Worlds Sequel to Be Published in 2017

"Steve has a great track record of collaborating with other authors," said Marcus Gipps, commissioning editor at Gollancz, which will publish the sequel. "I've seen early material from this remarkable new project and can't wait to unleash Steve's new Martian terror upon the world."

A sequel to the alien invasion classic War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells is coming out in a little over a year. The book will be called The Massacre of Mankind, and will be written by British hard sci-fi author Stephen Baxter. According to BBC , it will "see the Martians from Wells's story invading Earth once more, having learned from the mistakes they made first time around."War of the Worlds has spawned a radio adaptation (which famously made people think the world was actually coming to an end), stage adaptations, and two feature films, most recently the Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning starrer in 2005. There's never been a canonical sequel, however, because the copyright on the original novel, which came out in 1898, expires on December 31, 2016. The sequel is coming out less than three weeks later, on January 19, 2017, because we're vultures.Although we don't think War of the Worlds really needs a sequel, if someone has to do it, Baxter seems like a great person for the job. He's known for his heavily research-based and realistic sci-fi novels, including the Philip K. Dick Award-winning The Time Ships and Vacuum Diagrams, and even has degrees in mathematics and engineering. He's also been influenced by Wells for his entire career; The Time Ships is actually a prequel to Wells's The Time Machine.After the financial success of the first film, which was the fourth highest-grossing film of 2005, everyone will be clamoring to make a sequel, so the film rights to this novel will probably lead to a huge bidding war. Everyone involved probably knows this, so we would imagine that they will attempt to incorporate Tom Cruise's character if possible.