My favorite part about this history of the Martian invasion of the Earth related by H.G. Wells is the somewhat apologetic comment by the author on the first page that, after extensive historical research, the author has concluded that the events narrated in the book did not, in fact, take place. But, he concludes, tongue firmly in cheek, they should have. You have to like a "historian" that's that honest about the "history" he's about to write.
Anderson (Mesta is a pseudonym for sci-fi writer Kevin J. Anderson, who co-wrote the Dune prequels - I know he's done more than that, but I don't read a lot of SF these days, and I did read these - solid workmanlike fiction that might do better with a tighter tale) spins a really entertaining story where the real H.G. Wells gets drawn into an adventure that later provides the ideas for most of his novels, from War of the Worlds to The First men in the Moon to The Strange Island of Dr. Moreau. It's really very, very close to the basic idea of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I was already familiar with the idea of a novel following along with Wells' War from Christopher Priest's The Space Machine, but this lifts the entire story off its foundations, so to speak, and builds an entire historical structure under both it and most of the rest of Wells' oeuvre. The only thing missing, as another reviewer has noted, and given the nature of the work it's a surprising oversight, is a simulcast of the book over the Internet by Orson Welles.
I enmded up not particularly liking the book - the idea was better than the execution. It actually made Anderson's Dune prequels look better, because the writing and action is similar, but they're vastly condensed here. Some characters zaip about the solar system in Cavour's sphere, stopping to hang with the Grand Lunar on the moon, then with the head Martians on Mars. It was just too much happening too fast - morte like a cartoon that a book. Again, not a bad idea - in fact lots of good ideas, but too rushed to really hold this much.