John Finney was born on October 2, 1911, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His birth name was John Finney but after the death of his father, when he was three years old, his name was changed to Walter Braden Finney in his honor. Despite this, he kept on being known as Jack.

Jack Finney studied at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, graduating in 1934.

Jack Finney’s career as a writer began in 1946 when he won a competition at “Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine” with the story “The Widow’s Walk”. In 1954, Finney published his first novel, “Five Against the House”, for which he became famous in the detective stories genre.

Jack Finney is particularly famous for his 1955 novel “The Body Snatchers”, which shows great attention to the psychology of the characters. The following year the novel was adapted into the famous movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. This film has been the subject of many interpretations, especially in an anti-communist key. Actually, both Jack Finney and director Don Siegel always denied a political significance but the story is well suited to the climate of paranoia of those years. The fame of the movie was such that over time some remakes were produced.

The most typical Jack Finney’s science fiction theme is time travel, which he developed in his own way, which isn’t a scientific analysis of the methods to do it but an inner journey into memory. In 1968 Finney published “The Woodrow Wilson’s Dime” but his greatest success, and not just on this theme, was the 1970 novel “Time and Again”, in which the author describes in detail a particular form of time travel. To write this novel Finney did a research and used photographs and drawings from the nineteenth century putting some into the novel.

In 1987 Jack Finney received the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Jack Finney died on November 14, 1995, in Greenbrae, California, from pneumonia and emphysema. In his life, he was married once, to Marguerite Guest, with whom he had two children.

Jack Finney wasn’t a prolific author: he wrote a few science fiction novels and a few detective stories but usually they’re memorable. Several films have been inspired by his works, both novels and short stories, even if only partially.