What's He Doing In There?: First Contact, Indoor Plumbing, and Panic

What’s He Doing in There? is a light, humorous science-fiction story by Fritz Leiber, first published in 1957. The story follows a polite, soft-spoken Martian who arrives on Earth after secretly learning English from radio and television broadcasts. Instead of seeking out governments or scientists, he wisely chooses to contact a cultural anthropologist first — a man eager to study alien customs.

Everything seems perfectly calm until the Martian excuses himself and disappears into the family bathroom... and stays there. Minutes turn into an hour, then longer, and the professor’s household begins to panic. Why is he running the water? Is he ill? Is he conducting some kind of alien ritual? Is he experimenting? Is he drowning? The family debates everything from cultural taboos to possible interplanetary disasters — and no one wants to be the first person in history to knock on the bathroom door of a Martian.

Leiber turns a simple domestic scene into a comedy of curiosity and nerves, letting the tension build while the professor, his wife, and their children imagine every possible explanation. The joke is not just the mystery, but how humans react when faced with the unknown — with worry, speculation, and a touch of self-importance. It’s gentle satire from a writer who understood that science fiction can be funny without losing its insight.

Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) was one of the major figures of 20th-century speculative fiction and one of the first writers to blend horror, fantasy, and science fiction with a modern, human voice. Born in Chicago, he wrote everything from psychological ghost stories to space satire, and helped create the “sword and sorcery” genre through his famous Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories.

Leiber’s work earned the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and he is often credited with bringing literary style and emotional depth into pulp-era storytelling.