"Maybe It's Just Some Drunk Being Funny, but If the Guy's Really Insane, Phone for a Cop, Unless You Think You Can Get a Gag Story."

"The Last Martian."

By Fredric Brown (1906-72; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; and the SFE HERE).
First appearance: Galaxy, October 1950.

Reprints page (ISFDb HERE).

Filmed in 1959 for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV series as "Human Interest Story" (WARNING! SPOILERS! IMDb HERE).

Short short story (7 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE; go to text page 145).

   "I'm a Martian. The last one. All the others are dead. I saw their bodies only two hours ago."

MEMORY is a tricky thing. It can make us think we know everything about something when in fact we're only remembering parts of it. Take Howard Wilcox, for instance, to all appearances just a regular guy with a steady job and a loving wife—but his memory insists he's from another planet. Fruity as a nutcake, right? Jaded newspaperman Bill Everett could be forgiven for thinking that, but, as it turns out, Everett has more than a casual interest in getting at the truth . . .

Principal characters:
~ Bill Everett, Slepper, Johnny Hale, Cargan, Barney Welch, and Yangan Dal (a.k.a. Howard Wilcox).

References:
- The Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV version is remarkably faithful to the original story. The title, "Human Interest Story," denotes a common brand of reportage:
  "In journalism, a human-interest story is a feature story that discusses people or pets in an emotional way. It presents people and their problems, concerns, or achievements in a way that brings about interest, sympathy or motivation in the reader or viewer. Human-interest stories are a type of soft news.
  "Human-interest stories may be 'the story behind the story' about an event, organization, or otherwise faceless historical happening, such as about the life of an individual soldier during wartime, an interview with a survivor of a natural disaster, a random act of kindness, or profile of someone known for a career achievement." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- Space references: Mars (HERE), Deimos (HERE), and Phobos (HERE).
- "It took me three days — Martian days, about six Earth days":
  Our author overestimates here: The solar day on Mars is only slightly longer than an Earth day: 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds, whereas Earth's day is 23 hours 56 minutes 4.100 seconds. Of course, Brown was writing in 1949, long before the space probes of the 1960s spoiled the fun.

Resource:
- Our latest encounter with Fredric Brown, one of our favorite authors, was "The Power," the tale of a man who didn't deserve what he had but did deserve what he got (HERE).

The bottom line:

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.
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