The Day After the Day the Martians Came

"The Day After the Day the Martians Came" is a short story by American writer Frederik Pohl, first published in Harlan Ellison's anthology Dangerous Visions. The story is set in the lobby of a Florida hotel, one day after the landing of a NASA ship bearing live Martians. The bored, jaded reporters playing poker in the bar while waiting to check out pass the time by telling Martian jokes, which are simply mundane ethnic jokes with Martians swapped in. The hotel's small-minded manager Mr. Mandala, incapable of wonder, views the Martians with indifference (except for the windfall profits.) He treats his black bellhops with petty condescension; after all the reporters are gone, he remarks to one of the bellhops that the Martians mean nothing, to which his employee gnomically and ominously replies that they mean a great deal to him.

"The Day After the Day the Martians Came" was adapted by Marvel Comics in Worlds Unknown #1, May, 1973, illustrated by Ralph Reese.[1]

Pohl published a follow-up story, "Sad Solarian Screenwriter Sam," in the June 1972 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It followed an ambitious Hollywood screenwriter trying to capitalize on media hype surrounding the Martians by pitching a film adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom novels (while still in the dark about the not-very-impressive nature of the actual Martians.)

In the mid-80, Pohl revisited the setting with five new short stories set in the same milieu, which were published in Asimov's, MF&SF, and Omni between 1986 and 1987:

The seven stories were combined with three previously-unpublished ones (The Missioner, The Beltway Bandit, and Across the River) and nine short pseudo-journalistic interstitial vignettes in a 1988 fix-up novel, The Day the Martians Came.