The Body Snatchers

For other uses, see Body Snatcher.

The Body Snatchers

First edition cover illustrated by John McDermott
Author	Jack Finney
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Dell Books
Publication date	1955
Media type	Print (hardback)
Pages	191 pp
OCLC	7148659

The Body Snatchers is a 1955 science fiction novel by Jack Finney, originally serialized in Colliers Magazine in 1954, which describes the town of Mill Valley, California, being invaded by seeds that have drifted to Earth from space. The seeds replace sleeping people with perfect physical duplicates grown from plantlike pods, while their human victims turn to dust.

The duplicates live only five years, and they cannot sexually reproduce; consequently, if unstopped, they will quickly turn Earth into a dead planet and move on to the next world. One of the duplicate invaders suggests that this is what all humans do; use up resources, wipe out indigenous populations, and destroy ecosystems in the name of survival.

The novel has been adapted for the screen four times; the first film in 1956, the second in 1978, the third in 1993, and the most recent in 2007. Unlike two of the film adaptations, the novel contains an optimistic ending, with the aliens voluntarily vacating after deciding that they cannot tolerate the type of resistance they see in the main characters.

Critical reception

In 1967, Damon Knight criticized the novel's scientific incoherence...

The seed pods, says Finney, drifted across interstellar space to Earth, propelled by light pressure. This echoes a familiar notion, the spore theory of Arrhenius. But the spores referred to are among the smallest living things - small enough to be knocked around by hydrogen molecules...In confusing these minute particles with three-foot seed pods, Finney invalidates his whole argument - and makes ludicrous nonsense of the final scene in which the pods, defeated, float up into the sky to hunt another planet.

...and its crude plot development:

Almost from the beginning, the characters follow the author's logic rather than their own. Bennell and his friends, intelligent and capable people, exhibit an invincible stupidity whenever normal intelligence would allow them to get ahead with the mystery too fast. When they have four undeveloped seed pods on their hands, for instance, they do none of the obvious things -- make no tests, take no photographs, display the objects to no witnesses. Bennell, a practicing physician, never thinks of X-raying the pods.

Under Jack Finney's entry in The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, John Clute remarks concerning the novel:

Horrifyingly depicts the invasion of a small town by interstellar spores that duplicate human beings, reducing them to dust in the process; the menacing spore-people who remain symbolize, it has been argued, the loss of freedom in contemporary society. Jack Finney's further books are slickly told but less involving.

Galaxy reviewer Groff Conklin faulted the original edition, declaring that "Too many s-f novels lack outstanding originality, but this one lacks it to an outstanding degree." F&SF| reviewer Anthony Boucher found it to be "intensely readable and unpredictably ingenious" despite noticeable inconsistencies and its sometimes lack of scientific accuracy. Astounding Science-Fiction reviewer P. Schuyler Miller reported that, once Finney sets out his premise, the novel becomes "a straight chase yarn, with several nice gimmicks and a not entirely convincing denouement."

Editions

Photonovel

Features 350 color stills from the 1978 remake

Film adaptations

• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
• Body Snatchers (1993)
• The Invasion (2007)

See also

• "The Body Snatcher" (1884), a short story by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Puppet Masters (1951), a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein in which a trio of American government agents attempts to thwart a covert invasion of Earth by mind-controlling alien parasites
• It Came from Outer Space (1953), based on a Ray Bradbury's original story treatment "The Meteor", which involves an alien invasion wherein humans are duplicated by the aliens.
• "The Father-thing" (December 1954), a short story by Philip K. Dick, appearing in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, uses the ideas of pods duplicating humans and fire being the means of destroying the pods
• "The Dark Brotherhood", a short story in the collection The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces, written as a collaboration between by H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth sometime before Lovecraft's death in 1937 but not released until 1966. The story deals with extraterrestrial creatures who possess human beings.
• Contamination (1980) a science fiction horror film that revisits parts of the novel.
• The Puppet Masters (1994), a science fiction film based on the Robert A. Heinlein novel
• Invasion of the Pod People (2007), a mockbuster film from The Asylum intended to coincide with the premiere of the 2007 film The Invasion
• The Host (2008), a novel by Stephenie Meyer that depicts a world wherein the human population has already been taken over by parasitic aliens
• "Planet of the Jellyfish", a Spongebob Squarepants episode that spoofs The Body Snatchers
• Capgras delusion, a real psychiatric disorder which causes people to believe people are being replaced by identical duplicates.

External links

• The Body Snatchers title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Cinefantastique book review
• Critique of book to filmed versions