The Puppet Masters

In 1951, Robert Heinlein published his award-winning science fiction masterpiece, The Puppet Masters in which American secret agents battle parasitic invaders from outer space.

Thematically, the 1951 novel echoes the emerging Red Scare and evokes a sense of paranoia also captured in the comparable 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

Opening Plot

The story is set 50 years (or maybe 150 years) after the date of writing: America and the Soviet Union have had a limited nuclear war which resulted in a draw and a resumption of the Cold War.

The narrator, an agent of a super-secret defense intelligence group referred to only as "The Section", wakes up to the jarring alarm of his skull phone. "Sam" - he later tells us his real name is Elihu Nivens, although that may not be true - is ordered to report to his agency's head. The director is known for most of the book as "the Old Man". We are later told that he is in fact Sam's father, and is that his name is Andrew Nivens, although again, that may not be true either.

Sam is required to meet with the Old Man personally, for the emergency is that a space ship his landed in Grinnell, Iowa. The Section sent in several agents, but none came back; and they only got one fragmentary report: "They are little creatures, about --" (before the sound cut off).

The Old Man risks the entire Section by going out in the field himself, along with "Mary", a female agent Sam hadn't met before. He tells Sam and Mary to put on a brother and sister act; he plays the slower of two not-too-bright country bumpkins out seeing the sights with an elderly relative.

They encounter vaguely round-shouldered people, and Mary notices that the men aren't sexually attracted to her, which means that these men are obviously hag-ridden by parisitic slugs! The invaders have taken over their brains and nervous systems and control earthlings like a puppet master controlling a marionette!!

Sam and the Old Man try vainly to convince the President of the United States about the menace but are dismissed. "Don't worry, the republic won't fall apart." So Sam forces his way into a TV executive's office intending to capture a parasite on live video (the author imagined many innovative futuristic gadgets for the story, but the portable VCR was not one of them) but a blown tube ruins the shot, and the President tells the Old Man to fire Sam. Sam heads off to his vacation cottage in New Hampshire with Mary: realizing their time may be very short, the agents decide to get married.

Meanwhile, the invaders are multiplying, and no one will believe it. Apparently licked, the Old Man flies to Florida to lie on the beach and wait for the world to go to hell. But, wait! Sam has an idea . . .

Closing Scene

During the novel, we learn that the alien spaceships came from Titan where they had enslaved a native biped with somewhat elven characteristics. The conclusion is aboard the military spaceship Avenger just starting out on a 12 year voyage to Titan. Evoking Heinlein's subsequent Starship Troopers, Sam is

a combat trooper, as is every one of us, from chaplain to cook

and closes with this stirring, jingoistic declaration:

Puppet masters -- the free men are coming to kill you!

Cinematic Adaptation

The novel was adapted, with major plot and character changes, into the screenplay for a 1994 film of the same name starring Donald Sutherland. The film was not successful with either the critics or the public.

Fixing Date of Story

The story starts on July 12 '07 which is the only concrete date in the novel. Although left ambiguous, '07 is likely 2007 and not 2107 because Kansas City, which wasn't bombed in World War III,

has many wide neighborhoods made up of family units a century old or more

which fits better with a Kansas City that isn't several centuries old.