Introduction

No one would have believed in the middle years of the fifth century that our 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 scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their dominion. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space and empire as sources of human danger. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. Yet across the gulf of Tridents, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded the East with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And then in 4447 would come the great disillusionment.

Father Camus, High Priest of Thoth. Ahyf 6/9/4447

(Credit to H.G. Wells)