From: bulldog23x@gmail.com   
      
   The Sad Lesson Of 'Body Snatchers': People Change   
      
   OCTOBER 17, 201111:50 AM ET   
   Maureen Corrigan   
   MAUREEN CORRIGAN   
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   Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney.   
   Invasion of the Body Snatchers   
   by Jack Finney   
      
   Paperback, 216 pages purchase   
   science fiction & fantasy   
   fiction   
   More on this book:   
   NPR reviews, interviews and more   
   Sometimes the stories that stay with us aren't the classics or even all that   
   polished. They're what some critics call "good-bad" stories: The writing may   
   be workmanlike and the characters barely developed, but something about them   
   is so potent that they'   
   re unforgettable -- so unforgettable they can attain the status of myth.   
      
   I've long wanted to give a nod to one of these "accidental myth-makers,"   
   novelist and short-story writer Jack Finney. The fact that Finney would have   
   turned 100 this month gives me an occasion. Finney started out in advertising   
   before he became a science-   
   fiction and suspense writer, and maybe that background accounts for the   
   pithiness of his writing and the intensity of his images -- images that bore   
   into your brain like a parasite. Who's Jack Finney, you may ask? The two-word   
   answer is: "Pod People."   
      
   In 1954, Finney published a serialized novel in Collier's Magazine called "The   
   Body Snatchers"; later paperback editions altered the title to Invasion of the   
   Body Snatchers. The novel was dissed for its plot inconsistencies, and the "B"   
   movie that was    
   made of it in 1956 was largely ignored by critics. That same movie was   
   selected in 1994 for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library   
   of Congress.   
      
   Three serious remakes have been made, as well as a bunch of dopier imitations   
   like the 2007 direct-to-DVD opus, Invasion of the Pod People, in which aliens   
   take over the bodies of presumably heterosexual women and turn them into   
   lesbians -- perfect for    
   viewing during October, LGBT History Month!   
      
   Parodies also abound of Finney's classic tale, among them, "Invasion of the   
   Muppet Snackers" and "Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers" starring Bugs Bunny.   
   The term "pod," used to connote a blank person, has become so much a part of   
   everyday speech that even    
   people who've never seen the movies or read Finney's novel know the gist of   
   the nightmare he gave to America.   
      
   It unfolds as follows: In a sunny California town that Finney calls "Santa   
   Mira," some residents have started acting so strangely -- flat affect, robotic   
   speech -- that their loved ones believe them to be "imposters." To his horror,   
   the town doctor,    
   Miles Bennell, discovers that giant pods from outer space have been colonizing   
   the town, replicating people's bodies and memories as they sleep. Feelings are   
   the only human dimension the alien pods can't absorb. One by one, the human   
   holdouts succumb to    
   sleep and erasure, until only Miles is left to warn the rest of the country.   
      
    Time and Again   
   Time and Again   
   by Jack Finney   
      
   Paperback, 399 pages purchase   
   literary fiction   
   fiction   
   More on this book:   
   NPR reviews, interviews and more   
   Read an excerpt   
   Ever since Finney's novel and the first film version appeared, critics have   
   been generating theories about why this story has taken root, so to speak, in   
   our collective imagination. The pods seem to mean all things to all critics;   
   lately, a post-   
   colonialist interpretation of the pods as imperialists is popular. But, given   
   the 1950s context, the pods are most commonly seen as either symbols of the   
   "Communist Menace" or, conversely, of McCarthy-ite group think.   
      
   Finney, himself, always insisted that his book wasn't "a Cold War novel, or a   
   metaphor for anything. I wrote it to entertain its readers, nothing more."   
   Maybe, but, like so many other great genre writers -- James M. Cain, Shirley   
   Jackson, even (shudder)    
   Mickey Spillane -- Finney had a knack for unearthing shallowly buried   
   psychological anxieties. His work -- and I'm thinking here also of his   
   haunting New York City time-travel novel, Time and Again -- is suffused with a   
   sense of nostalgia, loss and    
   powerlessness.   
      
   People we love can change, Invasion of the Body Snatchers tells us, and   
   sometimes that change is terrifying: Lovers turn inexplicably cold; elderly   
   parents succumb to dementia, Alzheimer's. People may look the same on the   
   outside -- they don't turn into    
   vampires or zombies -- but inside they're vacant. That's why Finney's myth of   
   "pod people" really hits home, why it's still one of the saddest scary stories   
   ever told. When we read about or hear Miles Bennell shouting "You're next!" on   
   that nighttime    
   highway, we know he's right. And there's nothing any of us can do about it.   
      
   Related NPR Stories   
      
   Escape To New York: A Sentimental Trip Through 'Time'July 1, 2009   
   'Body Snatchers' Argues Resistance Isn't FutileAug. 14, 2007   
      
      
      
      
      
   http://www.npr.org/2011/10/17/141416427/the-sad-lesson-of-body-s   
   atchers-people-change   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)