This was a surprisingly good horror novel. I have watched the movies and, lets be honest, from the very title reader is aware of what is the main twist here.

But it is in the way story is told that I truly enjoyed it. Told from the perspective of a local physician we follow what at first seems like to be a mass hysteria slowly becomes a palpable danger which unfortunately our heroes cannot fight, let alone defeat because ... they just cannot. They can resist it and they can slow it down but for all means and purposes infiltration is just too good and too thorough to be stopped. Also the very nature of the infiltration is such that not once our heroes start to question themselves - is it what they see and witness real or not.

One of the comments I read for the book commented about one of the discussions in the book where there is mention of the weight of the sun-light but, if we put aside rather clumsiness of the explanation (which again for me is all right because these are discussions between laymen) what is described as a motor that spreads the invasion is nothing more than a form of solar sail. Another great concept here is the way copies are made - pure genius if you ask me. No need for physical contact or drawing blood, no aliens popping up from chest-cavity. The very process is the ultimate horror of all, waking up completely changed, feeling same but also completely different. As I said, excellent idea.

And while narrative flow is at times a little bit slow, novel itself aged more than well. And yes, after reading the novel I have to say no movie did it justice yet, they did capture the paranoia but the novel is much more terrifying than the movies in the sheer level of despair.

Recommended to fans of SF and horror. ( )

Enjoyed it! Finney has a Westlake-like clarity in his writing. The novel is clearly not metaphorical about communism - it is by an American about Americans, and one story in a string of alien-spores-from-space science fiction stories that was already long in 1954.

Loved this from the book:
But now we have dial phones, marvelously efficient, saving you a full second or more every time you call, inhumanly perfect, and utterly brainless; and none of them will ever remember where the doctor is at night, when a child is sick and needs him. Sometimes I think we’re refining all humanity out of our lives.

Em uma tarde tranquila de uma cidadezinha da Califórnia, o dr. Miles Bennell atende a um pedido de ajuda incomum: a paciente diz que seu tio não é mais o mesmo, que algo possuiu seu corpo e mente. Passados alguns dias, mais pessoas chegam ao consultório com os mesmos relatos, e o que vinha sendo encarado como um delírio coletivo passa a ser levado a sério quando um corpo aparentemente humano, mas sem traços de humanidade, é encontrado. A verdade sobre aquele ser está muito além do que Miles aprendeu na faculdade de medicina e, de maneira desesperadora, ele vê seus vizinhos, amigos, família e pessoas queridas tendo seus corpos e mentes dominados por uma ameaça invisível.
Publicado pela primeira vez em 1955, Invasores de Corpos deixou um marco na história da ficção científica. Seu enredo eletrizante e original e a construção da paranoia macabra transformaram o livro em um clássico que até hoje se conecta com muitas mentes e criações macabras da literatura e do cinema — como Bacurau, recente sucesso nacional de Kleber Mendonça Filho e Juliano Dornelles.

This is my second read-through, and really it's 3.5 stars. It's hard to rate this on its own merit at this point, as I'm a huge fan of the 70s adaptation and I've seen the 1956 one many times. Additionally, this book has entered the culture in a way that makes it hard to separate the text from the influence it's had. It's also dated at parts, which is not a surprise but can make it a bit hard to get through. This time reading it, however, I'm convinced it's doing some subversive things regarding gender that are perhaps not intentional but fascinating. ( )

Milkweed pods from space
the evil plan is nap time
the chillest baddies.
( )