The Body Snatchers

Author: Jack Finney

If you had to name one science fiction movie that encapsulated America's national paranoia in the mid-50s it would have to be Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and this is the original novel upon which that film is based. At the time, conformity seemed to fill people with dread, whether it was the idea of being swallowed by the faceless forces of bureaucracy (as in David Karp's One) or being turned into mindless slaves by a communist takeover. Finney took that dread and turned it into one of the most effective novels of the decade. Here was typical, small town America, people living dull, routine lives, when pods start to arrive from outer space. The pods give birth to perfect physical replicas of the humans, while the real people turn to dust. This, it is suggested, is just what humans do, using up resources, indigenous peoples, ecosystems, purely for their own short-term gain. When the story was made into a film, the moral was lost, but the horror remains. Why it's on the list: Finney was a competent writer of crime stories and science fiction, but on a couple of occasions (this novel and his later time travel romance, Time And Again) his work really took flight. And as the basis for one of the key science fiction films of the 50s, this novel more than earns its place on this list.