MARS NEEDS WOMEN
by Daniel Braum
When the first saucer landed the little green men didn’t say “take us to your leaders,” but “which way is Hollywood?” I suspected an ulterior motive, but couldn’t figure out what. I couldn’t believe they had come to make it big time on the silver screen but then again I was one of those people who thought the movie Titanic would be a flop. Now my youngest daughter has posters of greenie heartthrobs all over her room. And I can’t turn on the T.V. or open a paper without seeing a smiling green mug.
Hollywood’s leading men were out of work and outspoken against the “green invasion”. Tom Cruise was short, like them, and had that same insincere smile, an act, a friendly veneer that I always thought hid something, some secret. So I thought if his complaints weren’t so sad they’d be funny. Throngs of young men were coloring their skin green and wearing their hair done up in a kind of cone to mimic the Martians’ domed heads. Tall guys had it rough for once.
Apparently the Martian’s hadn’t heard of monogamy. The tabloids were full of their exploits but even that couldn’t quell the frenzy.
The awards circuit that year was full of little green men in shades and Yves Saint Lauren suits with tall starlets on their arms. My eldest girl brought home a boy done up in that stupid green body powder. Even my wife tried to get me to admit the green men were so cute and stylish. We fought over why I wouldn’t consider changing my hairstyle.
Some greenie band held a concert at the new Shea Stadium. It was like Beatlemania all over again, times a thousand. But still I wondered, why?
Until the next day when an Armada of saucers arrived. One over each of our cities. The invasion I had always feared had come. But not how I thought.
“Daughters of Earth,” the Martian ambassador announced on every channel on every station, “the sons of Mars have arrived and they all need brides.”
– END-
Neostalgia
by Rudi Dornemann
That summer, the fad was gamelan orchestras — steam-driven gamelan orchestras. You heard them clanging in corners of beer gardens half the night. You couldn’t take a walk the next morning without passing crank-wound tabletop models tinkling in sidewalk cafes and their circular melodies would chase around the inside of your skull the rest of the day.
Joe the Wrench knew what was next and vowed he’d be the first to get where the fad was going. His first girlfriend’s father was Balinese; he’d whistled some of those unshakable tunes. And he’d told them stories of what that music had accompanied. So Joe rolled his barrel of tools to the burned-out terrace where a beer garden had been, and set to work on the remnants of the gamelan engine.
He brought in scraps of a walking machine in vogue two summer’s back. He lugged discarded, discolored hides from the tannery, struck deals with the least mad of the sidewalk chalk artists and the least reclusive of the seamtresses’ guildswomen. He hung canvas, strung lines of the thinnest, strongest cord he could find, and stockpiled cylinders of light-lime.
Word got around. His ex-girlfriend’s father started dropping by late afternoons. He said he was glad she’d married that bank clerk fellow who kept getting promoted — no offense, he admired Joe’s energy, and his skill, but he sometimes doubted his direction. The doubts weren’t strong enough that he wouldn’t hang around to see how it all turned out.
He told stories and Joe listened as he assembled, as his machine rose and sprawled along the beer garden’s back wall. He told the old stories he’d seen performed, seas and years away, performances he barely remembered, four decades gone. Weddings and battles and games of dice and castles of fire. Demons and monkey-princes. Joe the Wrench nodded, posed occasional questions, spent evenings listening while he punched miles of spliced-together piano roll.
Then opening night: Joe stoking the engine, leveling pressure, lighting the lights and loosing the catches. From charred benches, the audience watched shadows stream across backlit canvas, puppet silhouettes driven as much by the music as by gears and steam.
Demon weddings. The histories of fire-monkey dynasties. Games of dice.
His ex-girlfriend’s father stared, smile wide, eyes sad. “That’s wonderful,” he said. “That’s not the way it was at all.”
