The aliens in Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters are often held to be stand-ins for communism, but I don’t find that explanation very interesting.  Of course there’s a parallel – the Titans are evil masterminds who control their victims’ thoughts and actions, and at some point in the story the narrator tells us that, hey, this is a bit like communism, isn’t it?

But to classify The Puppet Masters as an example of 50’s red scare is to miss the point.  Yes, it was published in 1951.  And yes, it reflects a general anti-communist atmosphere.  But what it really does is something more interesting: Inventing the zombie apocalypse.

Well, sort of.  Richard Matheson came closer with the 1954 novel I Am Legend, (except with vampires instead of zombies), but the essentials are there in The Puppet Masters: The loved ones turning into monsters, the exponential infection rates, the paranoia, the sense of futility.

Of course Heinlein puts a different spin on it.  The world isn’t doomed, we just need to use our heads.  He portrays the conflict as a struggle of wits, a chess game of sociology.  And he finds a perfectly rational excuse for having every single person in the world becoming a nudist.  Perfectly rational, I swear.

And in which proper zombie apocalypse stories has the best way to detect infected people been to flirt with them?  Too few, I say.  Too few.