The Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney

After reading this (and a few more of the books that King recommends in Danse Macabre) the utter silliness of the notion that literary science fiction is inherently separate from horror has become apparent. Influential sure, but horror? I thought this was science fiction. I had been surprised to see Stephen King list it as one of the most important works of horror.

References to this story pop up everywhere, and I knew what to expect in general terms of plot. I mentioned the two film versions, but there have actually been 4 Hollywood movies based on the book and countless others inspired by it. I think the story is basically the same in both. I looked online (very briefly) to see if anyone else had listed off the differences, but I found nothing. I only noticed that the texts were different when I had to switch between the two and found myself searching for phrases from one that were different in the other. I was reading from the original text, but when I was preparing dinner, I switched to an audiobook version on youtube that turned out to be a reading of the revised text. I didn’t conduct a detailed cross examination or anything like that. The revised version is actually set in the 70s, the place names are switched around a bit, and there’s a few paragraphs that are moved around/added/deleted. The changes in the revised text, as far as I can tell, were minor. In 1978 another film version was made, and Finney updated his novel to coincide with the release of the new movie and to make the book more appealing for a younger generation After this, reprints of the book bore the film’s title. The movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers came out in 1956. The first whole edition came out in 1955. The Body Snatchers was originally serialised in Colliers Magazine in 1954. I wish somebody had told me this before I read the book. If you haven’t read The Body Snatchers already, let me tell you a bit about its history before you rush out to buy a copy. I didn’t know they were based on a book until I saw this novel being discussed in Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, a history of horror. I have known of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies and had an idea of what they were about for as long as I remember, but I have never actually seen either of them. Dell Books – 1955 (Originally serialised 1954)

The Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney