The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars


John Wyndham was a mid-twentieth century author who, to my mind, follows in the tradition of literate English science fiction writers like H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon. I’d only read his The Day of the Triffids before and liked it very much, although maybe not as much as the wonderfully weird (and not very faithful) sci-fi movie adaptation from the early 60’s. The Midwich Cuckoos was likewise turned into a classic horror film that I’d seen and loved as a kid. Called Village of the Damned, it was then remade by John Carpenter in 1995 into what I remember as not his best work.

The basic plot is that one day, everyone in a small, remote English village falls asleep. The military, called in to investigate, uses animals to determine the boundaries of the phenomenon and also discovers that there is a mysterious metal object on the ground at the center of the effect. After a day, everyone suddenly wakes up with no apparent ill effects, and the object is gone. Several weeks later, though, people begin to realize that every woman of child-bearing age is now pregnant. The novel focuses on how the close-knit people in this small town cope as their unusual children are born, clearly not their own, and begin to display alarming abilities to control them. Quiet, understated, and philosophical, the novel addresses how people respond to what amounts to an alien invasion involving mass rape, forced pregnancy, and coerced parenthood.

The novel does seem outdated in using a male-centered, outsider perspective to depict something so intimately imposed through the women of the town. The restrained style is also almost too much for the outlandish events depicted, although it is typical for a novel taking place in a small English town at this time. It certainly does help add more tension. Overall, this is a creepy, unsettling, and thought-provoking novel.