The Midwich Cuckoos (original 1957; edition 1999)

Intriguing and not a little creepy...

It's interesting that the characters compare and contrast the insidious invasion of the Children in Midwich to [a:H.G. Wells|880695|H.G. Wells|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1201281795p2/880695.jpg]' Martians (i.e. from "[b:The War of the Worlds|8909|The War of the Worlds|H.G. Wells|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41ypfqo40HL._SL75_.jpg|3194841]"): "As the original exponents of the death-ray they were formidable, but their behaviour was quite conventional". Alien invasions have usually been depicted quite simplistically as a technologically superior force invading and subjugating the indigenous population, with far less complex motivations than, say, Europe's conquest and colonisation of the New World.

The Children may be a form of homo superior, a natural evolutionary replacement to homo sapiens, though the apparent involvement of UFOs in the "Dayout" in Midwich and elsewhere would seem to contradict any natural involvement. Hence the consideration due to the ever-present mystery of a Missing Link (there's always another link seen to be missing between any new missing link that is found and the ones already known), perhaps mankind's evolution didn't take place alongside the natural evolution of the rest of the world, but perhaps humanity was placed here ready-made in the same way as the Midwich Cuckoos by whatever outside intelligence put them here. Such a theory would, apparently, account for the differences between the races of the 'white man', 'black man', 'red man' and 'yellow man'...

Some of the ideas may now seem *a little* out of date in terms of current scientific thinking and politics, not just the supposed 'differences' between the races, but also the suggestion by some male characters that the women are simply 'hysterical'... The Children, however, remain fascinating and creepy with their clear understanding of the place of their species in competition with humanity. Yup, creepy... ( )

I enjoyed The Midwich Cuckoos more than I expected to, I think. I have a difficult relationship with horror stories: I have enjoyed a few, but I'm also quite susceptible to being made anxious and put on edge. The Midwich Cuckoos is one of those books that crosses the line between speculative fiction and horror, but it's more to do with a sense of the uncanny, a sense of deep unease, where the things we take for granted are just ever so subtly different, than with big horrifying things happening. That could be a problem for me, but having read The Day of the Triffids and The Chrysalids, I pretty much knew what to expect of Wyndham, which made it okay -- besides which, the sense of unease isn't so awfully pronounced in The Midwich Cuckoos. It's mostly in the way it's eerily matter of fact, to me, as a reader.

I found it somewhat predictable, despite being reasonably compelling. The narrator was not especially distinct from the narrator of The Day of the Triffids, to my thinking, and the ideas about evolution were completely expected from John Wyndham. Isn't The Midwich Cuckoos, in a sense, the flipside of The Chrysalids? I only just thought about that -- in The Chrysalids, the psychics are the ones the readers follow and identify with, and they have a right to survive because they're the fittest, and the others have an evolutionary need to destroy them because of that, for the survival of their own genes; in The Midwich Cuckoos, the psychics are once again a threat that needs to be destroyed, but we see it from the perspective of the destroyers...

In any case, the ending bothered me. It seemed somehow like a cop-out, because it was so easy a solution. There's something satisfying in seeing it coming, but still. ( )

very dated and more than a little verbose, but both of those faults are fun in their own way.

the little town of midwich all passes out one day, and wakes up the next none the worse for wear. a few weeks pass, and it readily becomes apparent that all of the women are pregnant (it being the 50s, there's no talk of not keeping these surprise kids). it's an alien invasion, but done slowly over the years rather than with spaceship landings and lazer beams blazing. worth checking out if the idea of idyllic british countryside banter about outer space takeovers sounds fun to you. ( )

One of my favorite things about Day of the Triffids was that the characters spent time in each of several different forms of government. Though little was explored in depth, the variety itself was interesting. I was hoping for that in this book. Not governments, of course, but perhaps different ways of coping with an unwanted child, or ridding yourself of them, or killing them. Unfortunately, the fact that the Children were telepathically communicating cut down on a lot of the possibilities and other communities of Children and their fates are only mentioned in passing.

Despite my disappointment on that issue, I still enjoyed the book. The Children were as creepy as one could hope, and the ruminations on social mores and philosophies were intriguing.

(The arguments against evolution, however, were absurd.) ( )

Once upon a time in the peaceful English village of Midwich circa 1957, every female of child-bearing age within falls pregnant. In time it becomes clear the children are... well, different. A horror story based not on supernatural monsters but the aliens of science fiction born of the paranoid post-nuclear age. Told from the first-person perspective of a character not directly affected, it's a well-written, suspenseful and chilling story, a quick read with a great ending. The kind of story it's best not to know much about it going in. Nice and twisty. Made into the film The Village of the Damned. ( )