John Wyndham - The Midwich Cuckoos
A classic science fiction novel from the best of the science fiction writers, Wyndham spins a highly intelligent, beautifully concise tale of alien invasion in pastoral England. The brilliance here is in the relentless normality of the prose. The basis of good science fiction is in its credulity. It is all very well thinking up a scenario, but if it does not strike the writer as something that could happen, something that could turn up tomorrow or could be happening right now, then there is no effect, no sense of tension or interest. Good writing makes us think about the world and about ourselves and this is what Wyndham has achieved.
The fictional situation is that over the space of one day, all the village of Miswich is placed in a mysterious trance. No-one can enter, no-one can leave and all inside are paralysed. After the 24 hours are up, all the occupants return to normal and it is as if nothing has happened - aside from one thing - all the women of the village are pregnant. So far, so sci-fi. But the way this occurs, the reaction of the villagers and that of the army, is so domestic. It is not the event that is important, rather our reaction, as humans, to the situation - the human world is the only world we have after all and Wyndham is too good a writer to simply take us away from this. Again, the reaction is overwhelmingly normal.
The mothers are stressed, hungry and concerned about their attachment to the being growing inside of them. The men feel redundant. It is overwhelmingly normal. The children are born and raised and very little that seems out of the ordinary We are trapped into the Midwich domestic world and its parade of rural caricatures. The fact that 'The Children' have golden eyes, seems an oddity, rather than anything more sinister. That the mothers are soon unable to travel within six miles of the village is a plausible circumstance.
Even when we discover that they are able to learn vicariously through each other, that they exist as one collective being, it seems that this as prosaic as the milkman wearing a new pair of trousers or the post office opening for lunch.
What this enables Wyndham to do is make us rationally consider the situation he has placed before us.
Through his mouthpiece Dr Zellaby - he provides with an intelligent, balanced consideration of this 'what if' scenario, one that we are very much now drawn into from the characters involved, but one that we are now able to consider carefully for ourselves what the reaction will, or should be. The idea of a race that can move together as one, think the same and learn the same to achieve higher goals, it is a not- exactly-subtle allusion to the communist regimes of the age, but the set up is so simple, and so effective, that at no point to feel we are being preached to, and feel like the politics are being forced upon us. The underlying humor adds to this, keeping the story plausible and entertainingly English throughout, never swaying our opinion by overdramatizing the situation and avoiding the clichés that usually pre this genre.
The Midwich Cuckoos contains all of this, but ultimately enables us to consider our fallibility as a race - that we are but human and not the superior individuals we are to view ourselves as - and that in one moment we may have to change our view of who we are in the world, rather than consider it as our own static property to live and act as we choose.
Bloody hell, how prevalent this still remains in our time, and how so many books and films could learn from the way Wyndham treats the subject - reasonably, succinctly and with a healthy topping of amusement on the way.
The fictional situation is that over the space of one day, all the village of Miswich is placed in a mysterious trance. No-one can enter, no-one can leave and all inside are paralysed. After the 24 hours are up, all the occupants return to normal and it is as if nothing has happened - aside from one thing - all the women of the village are pregnant. So far, so sci-fi. But the way this occurs, the reaction of the villagers and that of the army, is so domestic. It is not the event that is important, rather our reaction, as humans, to the situation - the human world is the only world we have after all and Wyndham is too good a writer to simply take us away from this. Again, the reaction is overwhelmingly normal.
The mothers are stressed, hungry and concerned about their attachment to the being growing inside of them. The men feel redundant. It is overwhelmingly normal. The children are born and raised and very little that seems out of the ordinary We are trapped into the Midwich domestic world and its parade of rural caricatures. The fact that 'The Children' have golden eyes, seems an oddity, rather than anything more sinister. That the mothers are soon unable to travel within six miles of the village is a plausible circumstance.
Even when we discover that they are able to learn vicariously through each other, that they exist as one collective being, it seems that this as prosaic as the milkman wearing a new pair of trousers or the post office opening for lunch.
What this enables Wyndham to do is make us rationally consider the situation he has placed before us.
Through his mouthpiece Dr Zellaby - he provides with an intelligent, balanced consideration of this 'what if' scenario, one that we are very much now drawn into from the characters involved, but one that we are now able to consider carefully for ourselves what the reaction will, or should be. The idea of a race that can move together as one, think the same and learn the same to achieve higher goals, it is a not- exactly-subtle allusion to the communist regimes of the age, but the set up is so simple, and so effective, that at no point to feel we are being preached to, and feel like the politics are being forced upon us. The underlying humor adds to this, keeping the story plausible and entertainingly English throughout, never swaying our opinion by overdramatizing the situation and avoiding the clichés that usually pre this genre.
The Midwich Cuckoos contains all of this, but ultimately enables us to consider our fallibility as a race - that we are but human and not the superior individuals we are to view ourselves as - and that in one moment we may have to change our view of who we are in the world, rather than consider it as our own static property to live and act as we choose.
Bloody hell, how prevalent this still remains in our time, and how so many books and films could learn from the way Wyndham treats the subject - reasonably, succinctly and with a healthy topping of amusement on the way.
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