...which IS in the public domain now. (Oy! Mama: come and look! Such a deal I got - not having to pay for a writer for something new!)
Go, read the book:
http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/gutenberg/3/36/36-h/36-h.htm
You bet. I have that from Gutenberg and a bunch more. I set my laptop to "scroll up" and read when I am flying or in the boring parts of meetings. If I convert to pdf, Acrobat Reader 7 will "speak" the text in my earbuds.
WOTW is a great story, as good as The Chrysalids IMO.
Speaking of Spielberg, Brian Aldis's Supertoys Last All Summer Long is also online. It's the basis of AI, along with Pinocchio, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and bits of the literary version of Peter Pan. If you have at least Supertoys and Frankenstein under your belt the movie is much more comprehensible. For me, AI was a superb film that touched on several deep topics, as did Frankenstein.
One of my all-time favorite books. I just bought my 12-year-old a copy, and I'm happy to say she's enjoying it. An interesting cultural note: I was afraid she -- being a typical kid into the Lindsay Lohan / lite rap world -- wouldn't take to the prose, but apparently Harry Potter and Limony Snicket have made Wells digestible for her. Conan Doyle, too. That's a happy thing.