Pod, Pod, Pod

I've missed the last couple weeks of book reviews, but I will try to make up for it. Before I left for the holidays, I read "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" by Jack Finney (first published in 1955 and adapted into a movie in 1956, 1978, 1993 and 2007). The novel opens with the small town doctor in California getting a call from an old girlfriend who is worried about her cousin. The cousin insists the uncle that raised her isn't her uncle. As more and more people in the town insists a friend or family member isn't his or her friend or family member. A local psychiatrist insists that it is all psychologically. Eventually, the townspeople not longer think someone they know isn't right. And then a friend (of the doctor) finds a body in his basement that resembles him (the friend). I have to say, even though I knew the basic plot of the book, it was still really suspenseful. I could definitely see how the novel inspired at lot of science fiction stories. And it was interesting to here the science portion as science was in 1955 (especially considering that the structure of DNA was determined only 2 years earlier). The novel is also the source of the term "pod person" (or people). I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys science fiction.