The Puppet Masters

By: Robert A. Heinlein

Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot

First came the news that a flying saucer had landed in Iowa. Then came the announcement that the whole thing was a hoax. End of story. Case closed.

Except that two agents of the most secret intelligence agency in the US government were on the scene and disappeared without reporting in. And four more agents who were sent in also disappeared. So the head of the agency and his two top agents went in and managed to get out with their discovery: an invasion is underway by slug-like aliens who can touch a human and completely control his or her mind. What the humans know, they know. What the slugs want, no matter what, the human will do. And most of Iowa is already under their control.

Sam Cavanaugh was one of the agents who discovered the truth. Unfortunately, that was just before he was taken over by one of the aliens and began working for the invaders, with no will of his own. And he has just learned that a high official in the Treasury Department is now under control of the aliens. Since the Treasury Department includes the Secret Service, which safeguards the president of the United States, control of the entire nation is near at hand.

©1951,1979 by Robert A. Heinlein, 2003 by the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust (P)2020 by Blackstone Publishing

A retro futuristic exercise in patience.

it's a very interesting book with its own idiosyncrasies.
it will most certainly not be everyone's cup of tea but it's definitely worth the listen.
I didn't know whether I would give it three stars or not until the last 15 minutes or so.
but after hearing the ending I can't give it anything less than five stars.

Still a great story.

I read this book decades ago. It is a well done alien invasion story first published in 1951. It's interesting to look at the technology described and compare it to modern technology, but you can see that Heinlein got some of it right and some of it wrong.

Bronson Pinchot does a nice job at reading the book and giving the characters differentiation.

good performance

loved the narration. not one of my favorite heinlein books. still good though.

aliens invade earth. to save the planet .... man must strip

What a great book

This was an absolute pleasure to listen and I wish there was another one after.

Very poor performance, story could have benefited from a female editor.

There are a lit of dated references to women. That is common to a lot of sci fi. But the voice of Mary was a poor choice , making this string , independent woman sound like an airhead. The way she is described as she falls apart is simply stupid. Unfortunate because there were some great concepts.

Engaging 1950s Sci Fi

It is amazing how a story written in 1951 can predict things like supersonic flight and driverless vehicles. 

Heinlein always needed Pinchot

Like a time machine. Pinchot reads this classic just as it should be. Bravo
This is Heinlein at his best with some good and some bad predictions of turn of the century USA. a time machine of 50's social norms makes it odd but priceless.

Needed better editing on the performance

So first off this is a niche book. For anyone who loves video game development and specifically X-Com. The story is told well it’s not over long and is pretty fun. The only thing that took me out was the editing of the audio performance is poor. There are many pickups that weren’t edited together well and it will often pick up the previous word and repeat it it happens quite often in one section. This took me off guard the first time but happened regularly enough I stopped noticing by the end.

Overall loved it because I do love video games and especially X-Com. Knowing the story that went into it was awesome.

so pertinent for today

It's amazing how well Heinlein captured the human races' antisurvival treatment of a new pandemic.

Campy 50's sci-fi in the best way

My only real complaint is that the way the main female protagonist is written is rather hilariously sexist. She's very one-dimensional and really only serves as a femme-fatale love interest without much character development beyond that.