Jack Finney - Writing Career

Writing Career

Finney's first short story, "The Widow's Walk", won a contest sponsored by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1946. His first novel, 5 Against the House, was published in 1954. It was made into a movie the following year.

Finney's novel The Body Snatchers (1955) was the basis for the 1956 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers (and its remakes). It tells the story of aliens who invade Earth by emerging from pods and taking over the bodies of humans.

Another novel, Assault on a Queen (1959), became a film with Frank Sinatra as the leader of a gang that pulls a daring robbery of the RMS Queen Mary.

Finney's greatest success came with his science fiction novel Time and Again (1970). Its protagonist, Simon Morley, is working in advertising in New York City when he is recruited for a secret government project trying to achieve time travel. Instead of using a physical machine, the participants steep themselves in the history and culture of a particular time and place, then travel there through hypnosis or self-hypnosis. Morley travels to the New York City of 1882. The novel is notable for Finney's vivid and detailed picture of life in the city at that time. Morley sees many actual historical sites, some now gone (e.g., the post office that, until 1939, stood in what is now the southern tip of City Hall Park) and some still existing (e.g., St. Patrick's Cathedral, then the tallest building in its Fifth Avenue neighborhood).

In 1987, Finney was given the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement at the World Fantasy Convention, held in Nashville, Tennessee.

Finney's story "Such Interesting Neighbors" (Collier's, 6 January 1951) was the basis for the second episode of Science Fiction Theater and entitled "Time Is Just a Place." It was first broadcast on 16 April 1955 and co-starred Dan DeFore and Warren Stevens. Later, the story appeared as an episode of the Steven Spielberg-created anthology series Amazing Stories and starred Adam Ant and Marcia Strassman. Spielberg's version was first broadcast on 20 March 1987.

In 1995, twenty-five years after Time and Again, Finney published a well-received sequel called From Time to Time featuring the further adventures of Morley, this time centering on Manhattan in 1912. Finney died at the age of 84 not long after finishing the book.

The 1998 television movie The Love Letter, starring Campbell Scott and Jennifer Jason Leigh, is based on Finney's short story of the same name, which appeared in The Saturday Evening Post (1959).

The Third Level, Knox College's science fiction and fantasy publication, is named for Finney's short story and collection.