The Puppet Masters (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Robert A. Heinlein
- First Published: 1951
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Science fiction—invasion story
- Time of Work: The early twenty-first century
- Setting: Earth, primarily the midwestern United States
- Genres: Long fiction, Science fiction
- Subjects: Future, Twenty-first century, Midwest, Earth, Aliens, space
- Locales: United States, Earth
The Plot
The Puppet Masters is the story of an alien invasion, one of the first invasion stories to utilize the motif of predatory aliens effecting a parasitic or symbiotic control over the human nervous system. The obvious and frightening result is that there is virtually no human defense against such a creature: Through their human hosts, the aliens know everything humans know; no secret can be kept from the aliens, and any human might be controlled by an alien.
The novel is narrated by Elihu Nivens, though initially the reader knows only his code name, Sam...
[The entire page is 948 words long]
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