SF Masterworks #82: Jack Finney, The Body Snatchers

I warn you that what you're starting to read is full of loose ends and unanswered questions.  It will not be neatly tied up at the end, everything resolved and satisfactorily explained.  Not by me it won't, anyway.  Because I can't say I really know exactly what happened, or why, or just how it began, how it ended, or if it has ended; and I've been right in the thick of it.  Now if you don't like that kind of story, I'm sorry, and you'd better not read it.  All I can do is tell what I know. (p. 1)

Jack Finney's 1955 novel, The Body Snatchers, is one of those rare stories that are better known in their cinematic version.  The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, released a year later, often is cited as an exemplar of 1950s cinema and its focus on paranoiac horror of the sudden invasion or inversion of American cultural values.  Not being an avid film watcher, perhaps it is just as well that I have not seen either the original film or its remake, so I did not have those apparently iconic images of the aliens in mind when I read the 1955 version of Finney's story (he revised it in the 1970s, but for this edition, Gollancz elected to go with the first edition).

The story begins in a small town in northern California, Santa Mira, in 1953 (coincidental with the first hydrogen bomb tests).  Dr. Miles Bennell receives a frantic visit from Becky Driscoll, who informs him that her cousin Wilma is convinced that her Uncle Ira isn't who he claims to be.  From here, a chain of events rapidly unfolds in which Miles and Becky uncover similar stories of displaced personalities, leading ultimately to the realization that townspeople have been replaced by aliens who have claimed the bodies and minds of their friends and neighbors.  It is a story that can be either suspenseful or hokey, depending upon the narrative execution and for the most part, Finney manages to maintain a high level of intrigue for the duration of this short novel.

One key to the story is the juxtaposition of the normal with the non-normal.  Neighbors, friends, family - each familiar in their looks, their choice of words, and most of their mannerisms - have something peculiar about them, some sort of "offness" that puzzles before it frightens the inquisitive.  Throughout The Body Snatchers, Miles and Becky experience this, including an episode in the town library when leafing through the newspaper archives for information on mysterious pods rumored to have appeared outside town:

We turned to the May 7 issue and began with page one.  There was nothing in the paper about Budlong or the pods.  On the bottom half of the May 6 Tribune's first page was a hole seven or eight inches long and three columns wide.  On the bottom half of the May 5 issue was another hole, just about as long, but only two columns wide.

It wasn't a guess, but a sudden stab of direct, intuitive knowledge - I knew, that's all - and I swung in my chair to stare across the room at Miss Wyandotte.  She stood motionless behind the big desk, her eyes fastened on us, and in the instant I swung to look at her, her face was wooden, devoid of any expression, and the eyes were bright, achingly intent, and as inhumanly cold as the eyes of a shark.  The moment was less than a moment - the flick of an eyelash - because instantly she smiled, pleasantly, inquiringly, her brows lifting in polite question.  'Anything I can do?' she said with the calm, interest eagerness typical of her in all the years I had known her. (p. 132)

Scenes like this, replete in the novel, provide it with a faint psychological horror.  Who is "real" and who have been taken over?  What is happening here?  Who's next?  These questions, asked and acted out for roughly 100 pages out of this 226 page novel, ratchet up the tension until Miles and Becky finally manage to make their way to the alien pods.  It is at this point that the narrative tension collapses and things rush to a sudden and odd conclusion.

Despite enjoying The Body Snatchers on the whole (and now being curious to see the cinematic versions at some point, despite my aversion to most cinema), the concluding chapters left much to be desired.  There is not a suitable payoff for the psychological drama that had just unfolded with terrifying revelation after terrifying revelation.  A simple, desperate action serves to end the story, leaving the reader wondering about the importance of the events before.  This does not ruin the story as much as it deadens its effect, with such a simple, direct remedy for the terrifying takeovers.  Finney's ending just feels out of sorts with the main body of the novel, as if at the end some other author had taken over his story and wrote something that felt incongruent with the rest of the novel.

Some readers might be tempted to read The Body Snatchers as a commentary on the Red Scare of the mid-1950s and certainly there are elements within the story that would support this.  However, the psychological aspect to the story removes it from the realm of direct political allegory and places it in a more nebulous conflict, one where the reader can imagine herself surrounded by familiar, menacing enemies.  This aspect of The Body Snatchers makes it an enduring classic that has a relevance beyond its original 1950s milieu with much to offer to readers of the early 21st century.

Fantasy Masterwork #20: Jack Finney, Time and Again

It is the 1950s and the world is changing by leaps and bounds. Technology is developing faster than ever before and the US government is willing to try almost anything in the name of science if they can be the first to do it, which leads them to a very unorthodox time travel experiment. Simon (Si) Morley a designer/illustrator and former military man, living in Manhattan is recruited by a secret organization to be trained as a time traveler.

The first section mainly has to do with Si's training, which when all is said and done seemed over blown given the simple mechanism for his travel. This section also dithers about too much and was quite slow. But the themes of the story are what make this an engrossing read with its vivid and disarming ability to place you in the moment, especially when Si makes his way to the late 1800s in search of a simpler time. There was a gorgeous scene of a sleigh ride through Manhattan that was particularly well done. The descriptions of NYC during that time period feel real and spot on as Si explores the city he doesn't know and gets a taste of life as it was. Time and Again also features many period photos and drawings, which portray the places Si talks about and visits.

"I turned to look, and here it came straight for us, a team of immense white horses, manes flying, hoofs pounding, drawing a red-and-brass fire engine, the driver slashing his whip at the horses, a flat steam of white smoke link out behind it like the wake of a ship."

Si also bears witness to a famous calamity of NYC history, which is delved into with impeccable detail to history that is at time harrowing, but totally entrapping. There is no technological science involved in the travel although some psychological devices such as hypnosis are employed. This twist of the story makes the whole process of traveling too simple after all the training Si goes under to get to that point. That time is just a state of mind can be difficult to believe especially of hardened time travel story readers, but it somehow works as this is a story very much left open to interpretation as to whether Si's travels happen or are somehow caused by his training techniques. The idea of places being frozen in-time or being snapshots of how places once were is quite an intriguing as a time travel device.

"This park itself is something of a miracle of survival. Right here in the heart of what must be the world's most changeable city are, not just acres, but several square miles that have been preserved practically unchanged for decades."

Time and Again is in is essence a time capsule of a New York that is more than worth stopping in to see how the middle class lived, loved, and played. If you're not at all interested in life in New York at this time period, I wouldn't recommend the story. Also, the first part of the book moves very slowly and methodically with only a few what I'd call action scenes, but the descriptions and characters are richly woven. This is a journey for love and discovery about the true desires of yourself. Si never feels entirely comfortable in his life in the 50s. He is doing what is expected of him and when he has a chance to go to the past and almost start anew he grabs the opportunity for all that it is worth. Even though he is tries to be careful in the past he tries to experience the places and most importantly the people to the best of his ability. Si falls in love with the realness of the people of the 1880s often describing them as more human than in his own time. Their faces telling stories that would fill whole books.

"Now I saw her face clearly and glanced quickly away so that I wouldn't offend her, because her face was scarred with dozens of pitted cavities, and I remembered that smallpox was almost commonplace still. No one else paid her the least attention,"

At first glance, Time and Again does seem a little dated, considering how the main character‘s job seems so foreign for readers reading this for the first time in 2010. However, the most irritating part is the way women are portrayed and treated. There are two main female characters and one all but fades away from the story even after getting deeply involved with the secret project. The other woman, meanwhile, comes from the 19th century where she is already subservient. The latter is easier to accept since the last two-thirds of the story takes place in the past. In both cultures women are regulated to more playthings or support roles. One scene during the early days of Si's training was particularly annoying as three characters are involved with making jest about their light-hearted desires for a certain secretary. Little else would be different if the main character had traveled from our time period since it was about him trying to fit into the 1880s.

Is this a "Masterwork"? Time and Again does have a timeless appeal that has grown in the decades since its release, which makes it a Masterwork in my book. Having read Time and Again I can clearly see how newer Time Fantasies have been influenced by it, such as more recent greats like The Traveler's Wife or Forever by Peter Hamill, the latter of which also portrays a NYC of the past only more all encompassing as it travels through the founding of NYC to present time, but showing as much detail and love of the past as Time and Again shows us.