HG Wells's *The War of the Worlds* is an American text—if not by birth, then by naturalization. In this talk, I want to sketch the cultural and historical contexts of two North American translations of War of the Worlds. In calling this a history of “translation,” I’m referring not to strictly linguistic translation—although, as we will soon see, editors have substantially redacted and amended the text—but rather to the resignification that the text has undergone in different media and ideological environments.