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The Puppet Masters

by Robert A. Heinlein, 1951

Published: 2021.04.25

Home > Book Reviews > Robert A. Heinlein > The Puppet Masters

 

Photo by Wil C. Fry

★★ (of 5)

 

Summary

One of Heinlein’s earliest novels that wasn’t a juvenile, The Puppet Masters doesn’t fit well into any Heinlein future timeline, though it shares common features with many of them (sentient beings discovered on Venus and Mars, some of Earth’s major cities were previously hit with nuclear missiles, etc.) It was originally serialized in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine. The version I read was the first “uncut” publication of Heinlein’s original manuscript — his original 96,000-word book was cut by editors (over his strenuous objections) to about 60,000 words for both magazine and book publication, and what he actually wrote wasn’t published until after his death in 1990. The uncut version includes controversial scenes and conversations deemed too risqué in 1951 — like the opening scene in which the protagonist wakes up next “a blonde” whose name he doesn’t recall, and whom he abandons in his apartment as he goes to work.

The book is of course the basis for the 1994 Donald Sutherland feature film of the same name, which didn’t do well either at the box office or among critics. (It was notably different from the novel, though basic plot lines are there.) It is not related in any way to the series of horror films about demonic puppets.

The premise is that, in the far distant future of 2007, when there are flying cars and fully automated kitchens, alien parasites (also known in the book as “slugs” and “titans”) land on Earth and began attaching themselves to humans, usually along the upper spine, underneath the shirt. Once attached, the slugs can shut off the part of the human mind that’s normally in control, and then control the being entirely. (The human thus used remains conscious throughout.) The slugs spread rapidly, always in hiding at first, taking captive more and more humans. Even after proof is presented and the government moves to act, many U.S. citizens remain skeptical, believing it’s “scare” cooked up by one of the political parties — this part was on point for me to read during the current pandemic when people all around me refuse to believe that Covid-19 is real, or dangerous.

(Note: Heinlein’s novel predates by four years Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers, with which it shares some similarities. In 1998’s teen movie The Faculty, one character says “The Body Snatchers is a blatant ripoff of The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein”.)

 

The Good

I don’t know if the premise is entirely original, but certainly many alien invasion books and films that came after this book either paid homage to it or clearly borrowed from its themes and ideas about alien biology and thought processes.

The main character (first person narrator Sam Nivens) goes through a noticeable character arc throughout the book, and other characters are differentiated nicely from him and each other. (This is in contrast to some other Heinlein novels of this time, in which many characters have the same personalities.)

Several times I was astounded into Heinlein’s insight into how average citizens might react to the news of such an alien invasion. Some outright didn’t believe it; others thought it was a plot hatched by the other political party; and still others thought it was a good thing that the slugs were taking control of human society. More than once, the wording caught my eye because it sounded so strangely similar to people today reacting to news about the coronavirus pandemic, or vaccines, or global warming.

The story itself was fun, with plenty of action and sharp conversations.

 

Points Off For...

It might just be this “expanded version” (including the full original text), but there are parts that don’t seem to fit, like Sam Nivens’ arguments/conversations with Mary about whether or not they should get married, and then their stupefyingly poor decision to go on a honeymoon in the middle of the alien takeover (of which they are both well aware).

Uncharacteristically, Heinlein has his protagonists bad-mouthing scientists and never being proved incorrect. (It’s civilian agents who figure out how to defeat the parasites with biological warfare when the scientists were stumped.)

At times, Heinlein has his narrator go off on irrelevant tangents, distracting from the story at hand. It wasn’t as bad as some of his later novels, but I noticed the budding tendency here, as early as 1951.

 

For Its Time...

Though set in 2007, much of the book is colored heavily by 1951 world events — there are plenty of mentions of the “commisars”, Soviet Russia, and communist China, the latter two of which were still behind the Iron Curtain in fictional 2007. More than once, parallels are drawn between the brain-controlling parasites and the communist philosophy.

The book uses plenty of slang, especially from the main character Sam Nivens, which sounds like 1950s-era slang. This is a classic blunder when writing novels set in the future: people 56 years from now will not use the same slang we do. (Some words, obviously, stick around and become common — no longer hip slang — but the majority of current slang usage will disappear.)

In its treatment of women, this book manages to be both progressive and regressive at the same time. A couple of army officers are women, for example, and one of the narrator’s most competent fellow agents is a woman. There are even a few women in the fictional Congress. But all the top people are men — the president, cabinet members, generals, head of the secret agency, scientists in charge, president of the TV station, etc. Several times the competent agent woman is referred to as an exception for her sex. Aside from a few surnames (like “Vargas”) that strayed from the Anglo-Saxon norm, I didn’t notice any non-white people in the book. Gay people clearly don’t exist in this fictional world — one of the early detection methods for learning if a man is ridden/controlled by a slug was to have Mary interact with him; if she couldn’t detect the man’s attraction to her, then it was assumed he must be slug-controlled.

 

Conclusion

Despite being one of Heinlein’s works that was made into a major motion picture, I don’t think this is one of his best, other than the core idea of aliens invading as secret parasites.

 





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