Extraterrestrials

In the world of publishing, there seems to be something for everyone. There are magazines about ghost towns and guns, chain saws and rare coins. Now comes "Unicus, The Magazine for Earthbound Extraterrestrials," a Manhattan Beach-based publication put out by Irene Chen, a onetime free-lance graphic designer and art director who quit her job to launch this unusual venture. And exactly what are "earthbound extraterrestrials?" "There's actually a double meaning to that phrase," Chen said.

UFO mania is sweeping this Central American nation, sending thousands of people each night out into the cold, dark mountains hoping for a glimpse of extraterrestrials. Hundreds of night sightings by upstanding citizens, not thought to be psychotic or prone to heavy drinking, have captured the imagination of the country of 8.7 million people. Each day, local papers report sightings by doctors, lawyers, students and even government officials.

I've heard it said that no book has an effect on us comparable to the ones we read before the age of 16. The most powerful influence on my adolescent imagination was Marine Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe's "The Flying Saucers Are Real," which I read and reread in the mid-1950s until the paperback disintegrated. Keyhoe's advice, in the words of a sci-fi movie of the period, was to keep watching the skies. Aliens were scouting Earth, he said, and might land at any time to make their demands known.

I picked up Stephen Wright's second novel, "M31: A Family Romance," with the trepidation of one who cares not in the least for science fiction and who at the same time feels that he has been exposed to more "novels" about the anomie of the American family than there are available case histories to draw from. I need not have worried on either score. "M31" is a novel of original and wide ambitions, largely achieved. As it turns out, the book's title is more than apt.

PITTSBURGH -- Have we lost our humanity? The sober question animates the selection of 40 artists, six from Los Angeles, in "Life on Mars," the 55th installment of the venerable Carnegie International. Every three years or so since 1896, Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art has brought an extravagant contemporary art exhibition to town. Usually a survey, it this time takes the form of a theme show. As the exhibition's website asks: "Are we alone in the universe? Do aliens exist? Or are we, ourselves, the strangers in our own worlds?"

E.T., phone your agent. You're big, baby. You're everywhere. Books, movies, TV. Tass! Russia! You know you've made the big time when you can get the Iron Curtain to go up on your act. Hey, it's getting so people are expecting to run into you or one of your pals every time they step out of the house. You're saturating the market, baby! Keep this up and you'll be bigger than the Smurfs! Only thing keeping us from putting you on Burger King glasses is we can't agree on what you look like .

When the first Apollo astronauts to walk on the moon returned to Earth, they entered quarantine chambers designed to stifle any lunar germ that might have come back with them. With the first of an international armada of Mars-bound spacecraft set for launch late next year, scientists are now asking how they might deter a similar Martian invader. At the same time, they want to keep the spaceships from shattering pristine extraterrestrial ecosystems--if any exist.

THERE'S something that seems deliciously appropriate here about drafting an American to play one of Shakespeare's grandly obnoxious fools. Typecasting, of course, my dear. But think of the time we'll save on rehearsals. Of course, signing John Lithgow guarantees you'll get more fool than you bargained for. Six feet, four inches of a guy who played a campy space alien for six seasons and a transsexual ex-football player. You want a big, brash fool?