Hi 'morrisvan' and welcome to the forum
When I was a kid I had seen Sci/Fi films at the cinema and on the TV but they were always set in the future and usually in space or on strange planets, then my brother bought Jeff Wayne's musical version of WOTWs and I was blown away
It had never occurred to me that Victorian England could come under threat. That's the great thing about Wells, all the great Sci/Fi ideas were done by him first, Time-travel, Invisibility, Earth Invasion, Genetic manipulation and many more, he was simply a great author with a great imagination.
I am also a big fan of the original novel.