One hundred and eleven years ago, HG Wells immortalised Horsell Common in Woking, Surrey as the setting for the first Martian landing in his classic novel The War of the Worlds. Today, the unassuming park was pinpointed by Google in what Twitter users believe to be a reference to the birthday of the father of science fiction.

At around 4am this morning, Google tweeted the latitude and longitude "51.327629, -0.5616088" and a link to today's crop circle "Google doodle", complete with a hovering flying saucer and a missing "l". The coordinates are situated on a road running past Horsell Common, which users of Twitter quickly realised was the location for one of the first and best known alien landings in science fiction.

"'It's out on Horsell Common now,'" Wells has one character exclaim. "'It's a cylinder – an artificial cylinder, man! And there's something inside … '"

That something turns out to be Martians, and hostile; "A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather," Wells wrote. "A lank tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air. Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance."

Twitter users point out that the birthday of Wells – also the author of The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau – is just six days away, on 21 September, and believe the logo could be a "lead-up" to the anniversary, when Wells would have been 143 years old. Others point out that today in 1985 a Surrey family apparently saw a UFO on nearby Bagshot Heath.

The War of the Worlds has been adapted for television, film – in a number of versions, the most recent starring Tom Cruise – and radio: Orson Welles's 1938 adaptation caused mass panic in America when listeners took the fictional story at face value. Google's "mystery" appears to be causing similar excitement online today.