The Body Snatchers is a science fiction horror novel by American writer Jack Finney, originally serialized in Collier's magazine in November–December 1954 and published in book form the following year.

Unlike the first three film adaptations, which elected for darker, far more dystopian narratives (particularly the 1978 version), the novel contains an optimistic ending, with the aliens voluntarily vacating after deciding that they cannot tolerate the type of resistance they see in the main characters and leaving behind a small population of duplicates who are all hunted and killed shortly after.

In 1967, Damon Knight criticized the novel's scientific incoherence:[1] The seed pods, says Finney, drifted across interstellar space to Earth, propelled by light pressure.

But the spores referred to are among the smallest living things – small enough to be knocked around by hydrogen molecules...In confusing these minute particles with three-foot seed pods, Finney invalidates his whole argument – and makes ludicrous nonsense of the final scene in which the pods, defeated, float up into the sky to hunt another planet.Under Jack Finney's entry in The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, John Clute remarks concerning the novel:[2] Horrifyingly depicts the invasion of a small town by interstellar spores that duplicate human beings, reducing them to dust in the process; the menacing spore-people who remain symbolize, it has been argued, the loss of freedom in contemporary society.

[4] Astounding Science-Fiction reviewer P. Schuyler Miller reported that, once Finney sets out his premise, the novel becomes "a straight chase yarn, with several nice gimmicks and a not entirely convincing denouement.