In the 60th edition foreword by Dean Koontz, Koontz posits the titular body snatchers are a reflection of technology chipping away at our humanity, and this is a little more supportable with a few lines Finney writes about how the telephone is evolving or about how things are progressing "these days." For me, though, I think it goes even deeper, because honestly, people have been disingenuous to each other since before we even developed language. The popular interpretation is that this is a book about the red scare, fascism, or any of a number of political movements that have turned neighbor against neighbor since time immemorial, but there's little, if anything, in the text to support such a view. (It even reflects a very real, very well-documented psychological phenomenon called the " Capgras delusion.")
It is also a study in human psychology and paranoia, and it has remained popular for generations because it taps into something deep in our collective unconscious. Like John Campbell's " Who Goes There?" and The Thing (subjects of last month's THINGTOBER), it's the story of an alien invasion by a creature capable of mimicking us almost perfectly. Adapted into big budget Hollywood films not once, not twice, but four times (we'll get to those in the weeks to come), this novel-originally published as a serial-remains Finney's most well-known work. This is, of course, Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers, a story that has permanently planted itself in popular culture. However, Miles slowly begins to uncover the mysterious origins of the alleged delusion, learning that, in fact, people are being replaced, and he must race to save his friends, his town, and the woman he loves from an unusual invasion from beyond the stars. He refers this problem to his go-to psychiatrist, who is utterly perplexed by the phenomenon and labels it a form of mass delusion. Lately, a handful of patients have come in with a peculiar complaint, that friends and family have been suddenly and inexplicably replaced by imposters.
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