Star Begotten

It tells the story of a series of men who conjecture upon the possibility of the human race being genetically modified by Martians to replace their own dying planet,[1] beginning with Joseph Davis, an author of popular histories, who suspects that he and his family have already been exposed and are starting to change.

The book readdresses the idea of the existence of Martians, which Wells had written about in The War of the Worlds (1898).

The dialogue of Star Begotten makes brief references to Wells' earlier novel, referring to it as having been written by "Jules Verne, Conan Doyle, one of those fellows", as well as the concept of Big Brother, later written into George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

It is possible that John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), adapted as Village of the Damned in 1960, was similarly influenced by Star Begotten.

[3] In Nigel Kneale's 1958-59 BBC television serial Quatermass and the Pit and its 1967 movie adaptation, a discovery of strange fossils reveals that human evolution was altered by a dying race of Martians, in order to leave a legacy behind.