Disclaimer: I don't own The War of the Worlds. That belongs to H.G. Wells' descendents.

A/N: This is for a book report I did for school. Since I do plan on being a professional writer one day (heh... yeah... riiiight...), I decided to put it up and see what you people think of it. Please, review honestly. And I think that this is more an expansion of the ending then alternate ending...

Alternate Ending to

The War of the Worlds

by

H. G. Wells

I cannot but regret, now that I am concluding my story, how little I have to contribute to the discussion of the many debatable questions which are still unsettled. However, the criticism I am to no doubt recieve will be much worse if I do not detail how the Martians were repelled throughout the rest of the world. For instance, in Australia, one of the twelve cylinders fired from Mars landed in the middle of their Outback.

The cylinder in the Outback was the eighth cylinder fired, and as such it landed eight days after the first one landed on the Horsell Common. The Martians quickly brought the Australians under heel with their heat rays only. I've heard it said that they never once were forced to use the black smoke -

No, I wish to rephrase that: I heard it said that they never learned that they needed to use the black smoke, as they did on London and it's surrounding area's. Only the intense heat of the heat-ray's and the Outback saved them: the heat over-heated the fighting machines, and then the Martians quickly became dehydrated without any source of food or liquid.

Those in the Middle East were very likely the best off of all of us in the war. Only one cylinder landed there, as well. Being a land of much war, as soon as the first peace committee was destroyed by a heat ray, armies were sent against the Martians before the giant fighting machines were complete. Many Martians were killed before they retreated back inside the cylinder; however, many of the people in the armies were killed, as well.

They were apparently at a stalemate. The guns had no apparent effect on the cylinder, and whenever the Middle Easterners attempted to plant dynomite near it, the Martians came out and captured whomever had been sent, therefore having a supply of food and preventing being starved out.

To the best of current British news, the last dynomite attempt was 2 weeks ago, with a small group of ten people involved. All were captured, and it has been speculated that they will be dead three weeks from now, not counting whatever people the Martians still had alive with them before then.

And of course, a burning question in the minds of many Western readers will be: What of the Americans? How did they respond to the threat? Of the twelve cylinders, the tenth, eleventh, and twelth landed in the United States of America. Very little news has reached us about the American predicament. We do know that two of the three cylinders' occupants have been destroyed.

It seems that the cylinders landed in a straight line there, one in the east coast, one in the midwest, and one on the west coast. he one in the midwest landed in the middle of the city of Chicago, causing much disruption. The city was quickly destroyed completely as the Martians had apparently gotten transmissions of some sort from their allies in London and built their fighting machines quickly. Half then headed orthward for Wisconsin, while one forth continued south to destroy the Southern United States. These fighting machines that headed south are still at large.

On the East and West coast, little is known. On the East, the base of the United States' power, the Martians had a quick victory, but were not able to crush the spirit of the American's as they had with the English quickly enough. We have heard that the West coast drove the Martians out to sea, and then overpowered them with naval power.

The world has been sent in turmoil by these strange machines and their masters from Mars; but I do not count them among the evil. They were on a planet extremely far away from the sun, and their bodies needed the heat to survive. They saw it as not having a choice but to attempt to conquer Earth. However, it does not mean that I like them, and indeed I do not want to see them again for the rest of my life. I have seen enough war, and now, I suspect, I shall see much rebuilding.