Read this excerpt from H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds:
The planet Mara, I scarcely need remind the reader,
revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000
miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is
barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if the
nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world, and
long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its
surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is
scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have
accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life
could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary
for the support of animated existence. "Yet so vain is man,
and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very
end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that
intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at
all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally
understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with
scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from
the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more
distant from time's beginning but nearer its end.
In general, readers today have a better understanding of science than reader
In 1898. How would the tone of the passage's narrator have affected readers
In 1898 versus readers today?
OA. It would have seemed more terrifying.
OB. It would have seemed ruder.
OC. It would have seemed more authoritative.
OD. It would have seemed more exciting.