Customer Reviews

The Puppet Masters (Baen Science Fiction)

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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...

"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.

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.

When I was a teenager, Robert A. Heinlein was one of my favorite sci-fi authors. Time had passed by, but I still love some of his books. "The Puppet Masters" is one of them.

This book was published in 1951 when the Cold War was raging. That cultural background greatly influences the story. As I pointed out in other reviews, books and films of the period allude the frightful issue of: "They are LIKE us but they are NOT us. They are DANGEROUS to us", as in the films "The Thing from another World" (1951), "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956) or "I Married a Monster from Outer Space" (1958).

The story focuses on an alien invasion that expands all around the world with unimaginable speed. Sam and Mary are agents of an ultra secret Security Agency under the control of the Old Man who have a direct link to the President.

Both agents go to investigate and after discovering what's up, a fast paced adventure starts.

Alien parasites take control of human beings by the expedient of attaching themselves to the back of the host. The first frightful issue to overcome is how to distinguish friend from foes. Then, the Government has to implement some defense against them, that include a "bare backs" politic. Finally our heroes try to find the source and origin of the invasion.

At this height of his career, Heinlein was more centered in the action than in political or social speculation, as he develops in later books, with uneven success.

I recommend this book to all sci-fi lovers and those who enjoy adrenalin charged adventures.

Reviewed by Max Yofre.

"Were they truly intelligent? By themselves, that is? I don't know and I don't know how we can ever find out..."

While the idea of alien parasites infiltrating humanity is pretty much standard sci-fi now (from Jack Finney to "Stargate SG-1"), Robert Heinlein was pretty early on the concept. And "The Puppet Masters" remains a chilling story to this day -- he wove together some brilliantly vivid writing, some climatic twists, and an intelligent look at how the threat of alien slugs would change our society almost overnight.

Sam (an agent for a top-top-top-secret government organization) accompanies the Old Man and his new partner Mary to a site where a UFO supposedly crashed in rural Iowa. Unfortunately, they soon encounter bizarre gloppy alien creatures that attach themselves to a host's back -- and it turns out that one of them sneaked along with the Old Man's team, back to Washington.

With Iowa completely possessed and the government threatened by alien manipulation, all of humanity suddenly is in danger -- countries start bickering, people become hysterical, and almost everybody is practically naked. As the United States tries to keep the aliens contained, Sam and Mary must find a weakness in the puppet-masters that won't kill the host as well. And the answer may lie long ago in Mary's half-forgotten past...

"The Puppet Masters" is a true classic -- it spawned "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "The Faculty" and even a "Star Trek" episode. Not only is a chilling look at a quiet alien invasion via "body-snatching" slugs, it's also a pretty intelligent look at the societal changes that might come from alien parasites -- clothes aren't worn, pets become lethal, and an atmosphere of distrust where anyone may become a possessed killer.

The biggest problem with Heinlein's writing is the sexist attitudes towards "females," which is smugly condescending at best. Otherwise he comes up with a pretty solid "future" Earth that is just a little more advanced than we are and a few wars down the road (World War III is mentioned), but not too different in the ways that count (if you can overlook now-anachronistic stuff like a communist Russia).

And Heinlein unrolls a slow-moving sci-fi tale that's heavy on the social/political stuff, some horrific moments (S "All planets are ours") and a rapid romance between Sam and Mary. His style has a delightfully, deceptively casual flair and some snappy dialogue ("Cosmetics?" "Your own ugly face will do"), but he also does a brilliant job with the more atmospheric, intense moments of the book -- such as a blissed-out, hag-ridden Sam drifting around Washington.

Sam makes a good sharp-tongued, quick-witted hero who still has time to feel sorry about killing a poor innocent cat, although Mary is somewhat two-dimensional until the end of the book (when we find out more about her). The Old Man is perhaps the most compelling character: an incredibly smart and ruthless chief of a government agency, who cares deeply about his estranged son but is still willing to put almost everything on the line to save humanity.

Aliens taking over human bodies is something of a cliche now, but "Puppet Masters" is a suitably chilling look at the trope's origins. If you can get past the antiquated attitudes towards women, it's a brilliant little book.

A little bit Sci Fi, a little bit horror, a little bit love story, a little bit spy novel, a little bit war story. I'm just sad he never wrote a sequel or two. It's one of RAH's best. This is a great book and bears little resemblance to the movie.

Puppet masters is another strong Heinlein novel that continues to hold up today just so long as you imagine it as "future history" in an America that never happened. Most of the social mores seem laughable by today's standards, but all of Heinlein's strengths are there. First you have the rugged everyman hero. Next there's the lovely and also capable love interest. Last we have the wise old general who's still pretty darned rugged himself. But the main thing is Puppet masters is also based on a fabulously inventive idea, this one particularly sinister, which built upon and then furthered two generations of alien monster movies and books. There are great action sequences. I also enjoyed the speculative nature of the book as the heroes struggle to understand their strange and implacable enemy. The societies constructed by the puppet masters are disturbing indeed.