mass market paperback, 189 pages
Published Sept. 5, 1959 by Ballantine Books Inc..
The Midwich Cuckoos is a 1957 science fiction novel written by the English author John Wyndham. It tells the tale of an English village in which the women become pregnant by brood parasitic aliens. The book has been praised by many critics, including the dramatist Dan Rebellato, who called it a searching novel of moral ambiguities, and the novelist Margaret Atwood, who called the book Wyndham's chef d'oeuvre. It has adapted into several media, such as film (twice as Village of the Damned, in 1960 and 1995), radio (1982, 2003, and 2017) and a TV series in 2022.
A weird one. Absolutely in line with Wyndham’s other works in dealing with existential evolutionary threats. Worth noting the similarities with Lou Cixin’s "The Three Body Problem".
There’s definitely something here about nature vs nurture, about determinism vs free will, about open vs closed societies, about science vs tradition. It holds up—save for a few moments about other societies—remarkably well.
