The Midwich Cuckoos
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| The Midwich Cuckoos | |
| Author | John Wyndham |
|---|---|
| Country |  United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Ballantine Books |
| Publication date | 1957 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 239 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0718102363 |
The Midwich Cuckoos is a science fiction novel written by English author John Wyndham, published in 1957. It has been filmed twice as Village of the Damned.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The novel is set largely within the eponymous Midwich, Winshire, a typical small English village. A series of incidents near the village establishes that anybody who passes a certain boundary line while approaching the village falls instantly unconscious; this effect extends completely around a one mile radius of Midwich (thus affecting all of its inhabitants), with the unconsciousness vanishing as soon as a person re-crosses the boundary. Experimentation rules out any chemical or biological effect, while aerial photography reveals a peculiar silver object on the ground in the village itself. Police officers outside the boundary line use a canary in a cage to deduce the size and shape of the the line, finding it to be perfectly circular, and, after further investigation, the shape of a hemisphere.
After a period of one day the effect vanishes, along with the object. The villagers wake, apparently with no ill-effects. Some months later a follow-up study reveals that every woman of child-bearing age is pregnant, with all indications that the pregnancies were initiated on the "Dayout."
When the children are born they appear normal, except that they all have blonde hair and unusual golden eyes, and their hair strands have one flat edge, rather like the letter "D." They also have very pale, almost silver, skin. There are sixty-one children resulting from the "Dayout" pregnancies: thirty-one boys and thirty girls. It is revealed that there were supposed to be equal numbers of males and females (with a total of sixty-two children), but one woman in the village had already been pregnant at the time of the "Dayout" and so was unable to be inseminated - this resulted in only thirty females. Later, one male and two females die of illnesses.
These children have none of the genetic characteristics of their parents. As they grow up, it becomes increasingly apparent that they are, at least in some respects, not human. They possess telepathic abilities, including the ability to psychically force their will on others and control their actions and organs and other parts of the body. Also, they share two distinct group minds, one for the boys, and one for the girls. When one boy learns something, all of the other boys learn that, but the girls do not learn what the boys learn. When a girl learns something, all other girls learn that as well. The children, who are now referred to with a capital "C", have accelerated growth, so when they are nine they look sixteen. The Children want to protect themselves as much as possible. One young boy accidentally hit a Child in the hip while driving. The Children then made the boy drive into a wall. A bull who chased the Children got sent by the children into a pond to drown. The villagers, obviously angry at the children, form a mob and try to burn down the Midwich Grange, where the Children are taught and live. It was no use, as the Children made the villagers attack themselves.
The villagers learn that the same thing has taken place in four other parts of the world, including an Inuit settlement in the Canadian Arctic, a cattle station in Australia's Northern Territory, and a rural Siberian village. The Inuit instinctively killed the newborn Children, sensing they were not their own. The Australian babies had all died within a few weeks, suggesting that something may have gone wrong with their insemination process. The Dayout Near the border of Mongolia in Russia, it was assumed that the women were having affairs with devils, and all women and Children perished. In Siberia, the village was destroyed by the Soviet government, using long-range artillery, claiming it was an accident.
The Children are aware of the threat against them, and use their power to prevent any aeroplanes from flying over the village. During an interview with an M. I. , the Children explains that to solve the problem the Children must be destroyed. They explain it is not possible to kill them unless the entire village is bombed, which results in civilian deaths. It is revealed that the Children have put up an ultimatum. The Children want to migrate to a deserted island, where they can live unmolested. They demand airplanes from the government. An elderly Midwich citizen (Gordon Zellaby) realizes the Children must be killed as soon as possible. As he has a few weeks to live due to a heart condition, he feels an obligation to do something. So, one evening, he hides a bomb in his projection equipment, while showing the Children a film about Ancient Greece. At an unspecified moment, Zellaby sets off the bomb, killing the Children, and himself.
The title is a reference to the cuckoo bird, which lays its eggs in the nest of other birds in the hopes that they will raise the cuckoo's offspring as their own.
[edit] Major Characters
- Gordon Zellaby - a very intelligent man who goes on tangents in many different subject areas. This provides many good discussion topics.
- Richard Gayford - a published writer and the narrator who disappears for a while and then comes back. His main role is to get the reader introduced to the story in the first few chapters.
- Bernard Wescott - the middle man between Midwich and the millitary whose main role is to reveal important pieces of information. This includes the ultimatum proposed by the Children, and the fact that there are other dayouts in the world.
[edit] Major themes
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The novel's central theme is that of society being subverted from within by a force which infiltrates one of its most cherished aspects: children. These Children are aliens as they obviously do not come from Earth. Usually, aliens are evil looking monsters looking to take over the world, and must be destroyed. These Children are very different from normal aliens. The aliens arrive in an obscure little English village, not London or New York. There is no nationwide panic when they arrive. But, the bottom line is, the Children are still aliens, and must be destroyed, even thought they look like human children.
The subtext of the book is subtle and can easily be lost in the text. Throughout the book, many different philosophies and their merits are discussed and argued through as a way of coming to terms with the events told of in the story. Also, the author describes a Soviet reaction to the same situation, comparing it to the central story (of a British reaction).
While the book has been criticised for neglecting its female characters (for example, two central female characters leave the narrative halfway through, never to return), some of them are well-developed. Most notable is Angela Zellaby who is continually reigning in her high-minded and sentimentally modern husband/academic into the true nature and facts of the situation at hand. She is also the first to grasp the realities of the situation. But it is fair to say that no female character takes a direct hand in changing matters or affecting the situation.
Wyndham's writing style is quite accessible and the novel remains popular.
[edit] Adaptations
- The novel was filmed as Village of the Damned in 1960, with (unusual for science fiction films made in that era)[citation needed] a script that was relatively faithful to the book[citation needed]. A sequel, Children of the Damned, followed shortly afterwards.
- There was also a remake of the original in 1995 by John Carpenter set in Midwich, California and starring Christopher Reeve in his last film role before he was paralysed in a riding accident. This movie also included Kirstie Alley as the government official Susan, a female character not present in the original novel.
- There have also been several radio adaptations by the BBC[citation needed].
A dramatisation for BBC World Service by William Ingram featured Charles Kay (Bernard Westcot), Manning Wilson (Gordon Zellaby), William Gaunt (Richard Gayford), and Pauline Yates(Angela Zellaby). In 2003, BBC Radio 4 aired a version by Dan Rebellato which starred Bill Nighy (Richard), Sarah Parish (Janet), and Clive Merrison (Zellaby). The latter version was released on CD by BBC Audiobooks in 2007.
Wyndham began work on a sequel novel, Midwich Main, which he abandoned after only a few chapters.
The Thai film Kawow Tee Bangpleng (Cuckoos at Bangpleng) is a localized take on the story, based on a book that is clearly based on unattributed wholesale borrowings from Wyndham's book. The Thai version contains intriguing differences due to the confrontation between the alien intelligences and Buddhist philosophy. [1].
[edit] Allusions/references from other works
- The Stepford Cuckoos, a group of New X-Men characters were partly inspired by the Midwich Cuckoos.
- In The Simpsons episode, 'Wild Barts Can't Be Broken', the children go to see a film entitled 'The Bloodening', a parody of Village of the Damned. The children in the film look like those from the film adaptation of The Midwich Cuckoos.
- The Befort Children from the anime Fantastic Children were also inspired by the Midwich Cuckoos.
- 1440 Cuckoo is a song written in 2006 by British singer/songwriter Pete Doherty and was inspired by the serial number of the Penguin edition of the novel which Doherty read while in rehab at the Priory in London.
- In Smallville, episode 9 of season 3, entitled "Asylum" (2004), one of the characters is reading "The Midwich Cuckoos," which proves to be prophetic about that character's nature.
- In Catherine Jinks's book, Evil Genius, teachers of the main character, Cadel, speculate about the possibility of his physical resemblance to the children in The Midwich Cuckoos.
- The plot of Beetle in the Anthill, a novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, is has some similarities. Authorities of Earth have a great fear about the group of foundling children, alleged to be Wanderers' spies and probably even non-human. These children were moved out of Earth by a secret order of government, but later one of them came back to Earth and was killed by Earth's security service.
- The weekly webcomic "Freak Angels", written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Paul Duffield, is also loosely based on The Midwich Cuckoos. It portrays characters of a similar type who have grown into adulthood. [2]
- In the videogame Silent Hill, the local elementary school is called Midwich Elementary School.
[edit] Notes
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