The Scandalized Martians

Screenwriter Ronnie is used to Hollywood’s absurdities, but even he is startled by director David Fry’s latest demand: a movie so “realistic” that it cannot possibly pass the censors. When Fry storms out of the studio, he seems destined to vanish into obscurity—until seven months later, when he returns with an astonishing claim.

Fry says he has met a group of genuine Martians who landed in the San Fernando Valley, concealed their spacecraft, and arrived with a revolutionary purpose: to transform the film industry. Ronnie is skeptical until Fry demonstrates a mysterious device that can make a person disappear. Drawn into the secret, Ronnie agrees to meet the visitors and write the screenplay that could make cinematic history. With sharp dialogue, Hollywood satire, and wonderfully eccentric science fiction, this lively story follows two uneasy collaborators as they confront the possibility that the ultimate outsiders may have very definite opinions about movies—and modesty.