The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)

What is going on when "...they are cuckoo children"...!?

The Midwich Cuckoos is a smoothly paced mystery which travels slowly through the events of a village and
the impacts on its people.

Each of the main characters - Richard and Janet Gaylord, Bernard, Zellaby and Angela, Ferralyn and Alan - guide
readers with their often contradictory feelings and opinions to the explosive conclusion.

Following Mr. Zellaby, we are drawn with them to seek all other possible alternatives.

Suspension of disbelief only regarding the passage of 8 years where no one outside Midwich reacts.

Many lasting quotes: "What is going on here is a burning of books before they have been written." ( )

“Knowledge is simply a kind of fuel; it needs the motor of understanding to convert it into power.”

Perhaps not one of Wyndham's best known novels and on the face of it this is a fairly straight forward and cosy SF thriller however, read it more carefully and you will realise that it is much more than this.

The village of Midwich is shut off from the outside world and put to sleep for 24 hours. Some weeks later all the women of childbearing age find that they are pregnant, and give birth to golden-eyed children who look remarkably alike and seem to have telepathic powers which they use to coerce initially their mothers than later the villagers as a whole. The narrator, Richard Gayford, is clear that the children are a simple threat not just to the village but also the whole of humanity and must be destroyed, yet he is a fallible narrator who seems quite unaware as to what is going on under his very nose.

By reading purely what is written on the page the novel appears to be a about a struggle between aliens and humans – but delve a little deeper it becomes apparent it's actually about a struggle between men and women. There is pregnancy, abortion, childbirth and motherhood, and whilst the children may have alien fathers they also have human mothers,a point the narrator seems to totally disregard. In fact the women's' opinions go largely unheard. The ending, an act of genocide, only underlines this point.

This novel would no doubt be regarded nowadays as being at the softer end of the SF genre yet still goes on to ask some pretty profound questions about the limits of our culture and perhaps what it means to be truly human, all of which is achieved with subtle irony and ambiguity. This book deserves to be on the 1001 list and also deserves to be read more widely. ( )

Haunting novel about human-ish cuckoos and the way that people are likely to respond. ( )

Utterly chilling and years ahead of its time, this is a scifi horror classic that should not be missed. ( )

This is one of the books, like The Stepford Wives or Rosemary’s Baby, that has become an icon of popular culture: even if you haven’t read it, or seen the related films, you know the basic premise. I spotted it in the library today and, because I have another of Wyndham’s books lined up waiting to be read (Triffids, no less), I thought this would make an interesting comparison. For some reason I’d always imagined that Midwich would be a horror story, but it’s something far more subtle and sophisticated: a creeping, chilling sci-fi thriller which places its characters in the ultimate moral dilemma.

For the rest of the review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2016/11/19/the-midwich-cuckoos-john-wyndham/ ( )