The Puppet Masters (Baen Science Fiction) [Mass Market Paperback]

Robert A. Heinlein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 27, 2010 | Series: Baen Science Fiction

First came the news that a flying saucer had landed in Iowa. Then came the announcement that the whole thing was a hoax. End of story. Case closed.

            Except that two agents of the most secret intelligence agency in the U.S. government were on the scene and disappeared without reporting in. And four more agents who were sent in also disappeared. So the head of the agency and his two top agents went in and managed to get out with their discovery: an invasion is underway by slug-like aliens who can touch a human and completely control his or her mind. What the humans know, they know. What the slugs want, no matter what, the human will do. And most of Iowa is already under their control.

            Sam Cavanaugh was one of the agents who discovered the truth. Unfortunately, that was just before he was taken over by one of the aliens and began working for the invaders, with no will of his own. And he has just learned that a high official in the Treasury Department is now under control of the aliens. Since the Treasury Department includes the Secret Service, which safeguards the President of the United States, control of the entire nation is near at hand .

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert A. Heinlein was the greatest science fiction writer who ever lived. His novels have been translated into every literate language on the globe—over 25 million Heinlein books are in print in this country alone.  For five decades, young readers of science fiction discovered Heinlein, then gone on to voraciously devour every Heinlein book they can get their hands on. His now-legendary Stranger in a Strange Land was the first hardcover bestseller by a science fiction writer. From 1975 on, every new Heinlein novel made the New York Times best-seller list and shipped a million copies, including The Number of the Beast, Friday, Job: A Comedy of Justice, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset. In a career spanning half a century, he wrote over forty books, and four of his novels won Hugo Awards, an unequalled record for almost four decades. For the last three generations of readers, Heinlein is science fiction.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Baen (July 27, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 143913376X
• ISBN-13: 978-1439133767
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #157,496 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Way ahead of its time, January 19, 2012

By 

Brad "Darth Gunner" (LOGAN, UT, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Puppet Masters (Baen Science Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)

Not too dated for 60+ years old, in fact some of the personal telephone business seems just this side of psychic. The rockets never came to pass, as such, but it isn't hard to sub them for planes and call it a day. The only other thing I can see some folks would have trouble with is the use of real dates, that have since come and gone without the stated things happening.

The Puppet Masters is the Body Snatchers, with more imagination, fewer inconsistencies, oh, and 4 years earlier on the release...

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Early Heinlein at his best, January 3, 2011

By 

TChris (Tzer Island) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Puppet Masters (Baen Science Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)

"Aliens take over human minds" was the plot of more than one Star Trek episode -- and of nearly every episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea -- but the concept was still fresh when Heinlein wrote The Puppet Masters. Rarely has it been employed more successfully. Heinlein was a great believer in the rugged individualist's desire and ability to fight for freedom, a feeling he captured brilliantly in The Puppet Masters.

Published in 1951, during the time Heinlein was busy turning out juvenile novels, The Puppet Masters is very much an adult novel. The hero (using the cover name "Sam") openly lusts after a fellow agent, comments upon her physical attributes, considers calling an escort agency, and takes pills to wake up or to sharpen his wits or to extend his sense of time (and enjoys the high). Heinlein had some fun with the obvious way to make sure your neighbor isn't hosting an alien on his back: by presidential order, nudity becomes the required fashion. Daring stuff for 1951!

The story moves quickly, Sam's reluctantly heroic actions are plausible, and Heinlein invests Sam with a full personality -- and an opinionated one, as one expects from a Heinlein hero. The Puppet Masters has more of a thriller feel than some of Heinlein's more cerebral novels. Ignoring the fact that Russia seems less a threat now than it did six decades ago, the novel has aged well, and should retain its appeal to the modern reader.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Best SF Novels Ever Published, October 8, 2011

By 

George Duncan "verogolfer" (Lake Placid, Fla) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Puppet Masters (Baen Science Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)

If there is somewhere in the Twilight Zone a Hall of Fame of Freedom, Robert Heinlein has an honored place there. This is not only an incredibly suspensful novel, it is a treatise on freedom, duty and courage.

If you don't regard Heinlein as one of the best sf writers in the history of the genre, he at least would be in the top three, and I would rate him first. This novel was one of his finest. It is the best of the best.

Alien parasites are taking over humans and agents from a secret government agency must combat them and save the nation and the world. This may sound like a cliche but in Heinlein's hands it is masterful. At first, the parasites attach themselves to the back of their victims, between the shoulder blades. The reader may be scratching at that area any number of times before he finishes the book.

the characters are sound and solid. They are typical Heinlein heroes but they are also individuals. Read the book for the first time almost forty years and I have never forgotten the last few lines.

Many, shall we say, elite writers have dismissed Heinlein but their books are long forgotten, His books may be remembered forever.