Jack Finney
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Jack Finney (October 2, 1911 - November 16, 1995) was an American author. His best-known works are science fiction and thrillers.
Finney was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was given the name John Finney. After his father died when he was three years old, he was renamed Walter Braden Finney in honor of his father, but continued to be known as "Jack" throughout his life. He attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He married Marguerite Guest and they had two children, Kenneth and Marguerite. After living in New York City and working for an advertising agency there, he moved with his family to Marin County, California in the early 1950s. He died in Greenbrae, California.
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.
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., The Dakota and St. Patrick's Cathedral, then the tallest building in its Fifth Avenue neighborhood).
Finney died of pneumonia and emphysema at the age of 84, not long after finishing From Time to Time, the sequel to Time and Again.
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 appears in the collection I Love Galesburg in the Springtime.
Works
- Five Against the House (1954)
- The Body Snatchers (1955)
- The Third Level (1957)
- Assault on a Queen (1959)
- Good Neighbor Sam (1963)
- I Love Galesburg in the Springtime (1963)
- The Woodrow Wilson Dime (1968)
- Time and Again (1970)
- Marion's Wall (1973)
- The Night People (1977)
- Forgotten News: The Crime of the Century and Other Stories (1983) (nonfiction)
- About Time (1986)
- Three by Finney (1987)
- From Time to Time (1995)
External links
- [Little-Known Literaries] - a fan site
- [Sites in Time and Again, as they are today] - photos from December 2003
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