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told in first-person narration by Miles Bennell, a 28-year-old doctor in the small town of Santa Mira, California. His former girlfriend, Becky Driscoll, arrives at his office just before closing time on a Thursday to report that she is worried about her cousin Wilma, who has come to believe that her Uncle Ira is an impostor.
    After going to see Ira and finding him unchanged, Miles refers Wilma to a psychiatrist named Mannie Kaufman in nearby Valley Springs. On Friday, another patient tells Miles that her husband is not himself. By Tuesday, he has referred five more patients to Dr. Kaufman for the same problem.
    On Wednesday night, Miles and Becky go on a date to the movies but are summoned by Jack Belicec, who takes them to his home and shows them a strangely unformed body that has appeared on the billiard table in his basement. Miles examines the body and decides that it is somehow not yet alive. He, Becky, Jack, and Jack's wife Theodora agree that they do not want to call the local police. Miles notices that the body appears to be a model of none other than Jack Belicec.
    At three a.m. on Thursday morning, Jack and Theodora arrive at Miles's house and Miles has to sedate Theodora. She is frantic because she had trouble waking Jack after he fell asleep. On a hunch, Miles runs to Becky's house, breaks into her basement, and finds a double of Becky there. He takes Becky home and meets Jack, Theodora, and Mannie Kaufman. They return to Jack's house, only to find the body gone from the basement.
    In part one of "The Body Snatchers," Finney sets the stage for a tale of horror and moves the story along quickly. All of the main characters are introduced and the small town setting is depicted quite well. The ending is a cliffhanger that is sure to make readers anxious for the arrival of part two.
    The second part of the serial begins with Mannie Kaufman providing a logical explanation that the people of Santa Mira are suffering from mass hysteria. Jack produces a file he has amassed of clippings reporting unusual events (much like those found in the books of phe-nomenologist Charles Fort), including a local story about seed pods from outer space.
    After Miles and Jack finally report the body in Jack's basement to the police, the tide in Santa Mira starts to turn. First a patient tells Miles that all is well, then he hears the same story from Wilma. That night, however, Jack finds four giant seed pods in Miles's basement. Miles and Jack recall the news clipping about seed pods from outer space as they watch the pods begin to take human form before their eyes. Miles destroys the pods and attempts to telephone the FBI in San Francisco, but the lines are tampered with and the call is unsuccessful.
    Miles, Becky, Jack, and Theodora pile into Jack's car and drive out of Santa Mira, traveling eleven miles on Highway 101. They stop and check the trunk of the car, where they find two more pods that Miles destroys. They decide to return to Santa Mira to get help.
    Jack drops off Miles and Becky back in town, and they walk the streets, noticing that everything around them seems dead. There is nothing happening, homes are in disrepair, and lawns have not been maintained. They are shocked to realize that they had not noticed the gradual change in Santa Mira. Returning to Becky's house, they stand outside a window and hear Becky's relatives make fun of Becky's concerns. Miles and Becky realize that the voices they hear do not belong to human beings. They run, calling Jack Belicec along the way to tell him what's happening.
    Miles and Becky visit the home of Professor Budlong (an appropriate name for someone who has been replaced by a seed pod), who discusses how long it might have taken spores to drift through space toward Earth and then admits that he's one of them. Having been replaced by a space seed, he no longer feels emotion and explains that the pods' only goal is the survival of their species.
    Budlong remarks that life "'takes any form