杰克·芬利

杰克·芬利（Jack Finney，1911年10月2日—1995年11月14日），是一位美国作家。他最著名的作品是科幻小说和恐怖小说，包括《天外魔花》、《Time and Again》。

小说

5 Against the House (1954)

The Body Snatchers (1955)

The House of Numbers (1957) for film, see House of Numbers

Assault on a Queen (1959)

Good Neighbor Sam (1963)

The Woodrow Wilson Dime (1968)

Time and Again (1970)

Marion's Wall (1973)

The Night People (1977)

From Time to Time (1995)

Walter Braden "Jack" Finney (born John Finney; October 2, 1911 – November 14, 1995) was an American writer. His best-known works are science fiction and thrillers, including The Body Snatchers and Time and Again. Themes that persisted throughout his career were a fascination with previous time periods and time travel, and ordinary people encountering extraordinary circumstances. Many of his works were adapted into films or television productions.

Early life and education

John "Jack" Finney was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After his father died when Finney was three years old, he was renamed Walter Braden Finney in honor of his father, but continued to be known as "Jack".

He attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, graduating in 1934.

Early career

In the 1940s, Finney moved to New York City, where he worked as an advertising copywriter. While holding a full-time job and raising a young family, he wrote fiction in the evenings, eventually selling short stories to magazines.

Writing career

Finney's first article, "Someone Who Knows Told Me...", published in the December 1943 issue of Cosmopolitan, has been described in later sources as reflecting the wartime message of the U.S. Office of War Information’s "Loose lips sink ships" campaign.

His 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 story "Such Interesting Neighbors" (Collier's, 6 January 1951) was the basis for the second episode of Science Fiction Theatre, entitled "Time Is Just a Place". It was first broadcast on 16 April 1955. It co-starred Don DeFore and Warren Stevens; it was then published in 1957, in the collection The Third Level by Rhinehart and Company; later, the story appeared as an episode of the Steven Spielberg-created anthology series Amazing Stories, starring Adam Ant and Marcia Strassman. Spielberg's version was first broadcast on 20 March 1987.

Finney's breakout success came in 1955 with The Body Snatchers, followed by a steady career as a novelist and short-story writer. The Body Snatchers (1955) was the basis for the 1956 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers and multiple remakes.

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

Finney's 1959 short story "The Love Letter", which appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, was adapted in 1998 into the television movie The Love Letter, starring Campbell Scott and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

His comedic novel Good Neighbor Sam (1963) was inspired by his early career in the advertising business; it was adapted into a 1964 film starring Jack Lemmon.

In addition to his fiction, Finney wrote two plays. Telephone Roulette: A Comedy in One Act (1956) is a short romantic one-act comedy adapted from an earlier, unpublished story ("Take a Number"). This Winter’s Hobby (1966) is a three-act melodrama that premiered in New Haven and Philadelphia, centering on a middle-aged businessman blackmailed by two young men into performing a series of humiliating tasks. Although there were plans to move the play to Broadway, it closed after its regional runs, and the script remains obscure.