What novel opens with the following?


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; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scru- tinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water

"War of the Worlds"

I don't suppose you would like to supply the author, would you?

H.G. Wells

Thanks to both of you.