Set in the year 2089, huge machines known as Tripods have taken over the Earth. Controlling humans with a 'cap' (a mind control device attached to the head at the age of fourteen) which erases imagination, curiosity and independent thought, mankind now lives without technology in a rural/medieval existence. Cousins Will and Henry Parker, only a year away from being 'capped', hear of a place where free (un-capped) men live and fight the Tripods. Their travels take them from their home in England to France where they meet Jean-Paul 'Beanpole' Deliet who joins them on their journey to the white mountains of the Alps, home of the free men.