Frank Kelly Freas, ‘Martians, Go Home’ (1954)


Fredric Brown (his name misspelled on the cover of this issue of Astounding, there) is perhaps best known today for this novella, serialised in three instalments in Campbell's magazine: Martians, Go Home starts with an on-his-uppers science fiction writer, Luke Devereaux, hoping for inspiration. He sees a Martian, an actual little green man, bald and elf-eared. Soon more Martians appear, and then a great many more, a billion or so, plaguing all the people of Earth. They cannot be harmed and killed (they teleport instantly away from any threat or danger) and they intrude into every aspect of human life: annoying people, mocking, blowing raspberries, spoiling poker games by revealing everyone's cards, leaking government secrets, larking about disgustingly in the food when people try to eat, and voyeuring people trying to have sex. Frank Kelly Freas's art represents one such Martian, leaning through a keyhole, a sardonic expression on his face. It is a fine artwork, one of Freas's most enduring: direct in its simplicity, almost trompe-l'œil in its combination of flat grey door surface and the three-dimensionality of the Martian leaning out of the plane of the image, his elbow and forearm, the elongated hand cupping his face. He is watching us, the potential reader. The colour contrast, bright green and blood-red (complimentary colours, of course) framed by grey, adds to the directness, although it is not clear what the tangle of yarn, or beaded cord, or whatever it is in the top left hand corner, adds to the whole. The off-centre framing of the figure works well, although when the image was reused for the paperback publication of Brown's story he is centred, losing some of his visual forcefulness.


The image was used again as the cover of Frank Kelly Freas: the Art of Science Fiction (Donning Company Publishers 1978): 


This is fitting, both for this collection of Freas's art, and in a way as an illustration for Brown's novella: for this Martian is a self-portrait.


This works, since the twist in Brown's story is a self-reflexive commentary: the Martian's are actually figments of Luke Devereaux's science-fictional imagination, enabling him, when he realises this, to control and banish them (although a subsequent twist reveals that Devereaux himself is a figment of somebody else's imagination).

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