An interesting development for The Host. The movie tie-in will be released soon, along with a new introduction by Stephenie Meyer!!
iVillage shares the new introduction:
An extraterrestrial society of life-forms (who went by many names on many planets) began watching Earth decades ago. Our planet was only the eleventh they’d discovered thathosted intelligent life. Human beings were meticulously studied in secret, and two conclusionswere reached: first, that our world was lovely and desirable; and second, that we were not peaceful enough or moral enough to try to coexist with. Rationales that had been made on other planets were made again: we were too destructive; we’d put ourselves and even our planet indanger through our reckless ways; eventually, if left to ourselves, we would obliterate most of what was beautiful on our world. These life-forms decided they could do better.The aliens were small, just a few centimeters long excluding antennae, and somewhat parasitic. They could bond with other life-forms, preserving the bodies but overriding theintelligence. They came to the Earth’s surface in other borrowed bodies and started the quick,quiet, and very efficient takeover.
For a long time, no one noticed. There wasn't much to notice. Your neighbor looked exactly the same, spoke with the same voice, remembered all your inside jokes and past interactions. If there was anything different, it would only be that he was more pleasant than before. There would be no sense of foreboding, no ominous clues, no reason to refuse his kind invitation to a barbecue at his home, or a playdate with the children, or a glass of wine, or whatever shape the offer might take. Your visit would last no longer than expected, and no one would notice the change in you when you returned home that night, unless they thought that you were in a particularly pleasant mood.When you invited another friend into your home on some other pretext, he or she would accept,and the cycle would continue, quietly and efficiently.It was only later, when the aliens (who called themselves “souls” in English-speaking communities) began to get comfortable in their new world and behave more like themselves— that is to say, more peacefully and pleasantly and ethically than human beings had ever been able to manage—that the last remaining survivors of the human race began to realize that something was amiss. By then there were few options left to them. Some fought, tried to mount uprisings.They were able to kill many souls but never enough to do any real damage. They were so outnumbered that as soon as they drew attention to themselves they were easily overwhelmed and integrated into the soul society. Others killed themselves rather than accept the same fate. And a few hid; they were the ones who survived longest. As the souls hunted down these last remaining humans, they discovered a variable they’d never encountered before. The humans who were aware of what was happening to them did not fade away immediately after the alien was implanted within them. Their intelligence lingered, fighting for control of the body and the mind. These uprisings were harder to put down than the physical kind, but over time even the most willful of human minds succumbed. Sometimes the experience was too painful for an individual soul, and it would be moved to a compliant host. The resisting body would be painlessly terminated.When such a case was discovered, the afflicted soul would be offered every kind of help and support from its community. However, no one would force the soul to quit the troublesome body against its will. Only if it was discovered that the host had somehow won the fight would drastic measures be taken. After a time, the souls began to debate—in the most courteous manner possible—the wisdom of using these resisting bodies as hosts at all. Perhaps the danger was too great. It was decided, though, that the benefits outweighed the difficulties. After all, preserved in these human hosts were memories of other hiding humans. Those hiding humans were violent and wild. The only way to create total safety in this world was to find all the humans left. The captured bodies had vital information to unlock.And so it became protocol to seek out from among a very homogenous civilization the bravest and strongest souls to implant into these resisting bodies. One such soul, who had lived on more planets than most and therefore was considered more adventurous than most, was implanted into the twenty-year-old body of a captured human named Melanie Stryder. Due to her past travels, this soul took the name Wanderer. Wanderer was watched and supported through this traumatic experience. Those who had the task of hunting wild humans, called Seekers, worked closely with her to unlock the information in Melanie’s head. They expected this might be difficult and take time, and of course they waited with perfect patience for Wanderer to accomplish the task. What they did not expect was that Melanie’s memories would affect Wanderer quite so much. Nor did they expect that Wanderer and Melanie would start working together.There is only one thing that a peaceful, virtuous soul would value more than harmony and community, and that is love.
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