posted on 08 Sep 2022

The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

Published in 1957, The Midwich Cuckoos was the fourth science fiction novel to hit the bookshelves under the name of John Wyndham (real name John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris) and follows the blockbuster Day of the Triffids (1951), The Kraken Awakes (1953) and The Crysalids (1955).

Wyndham’s reputation very much splits opinion amongst science fiction aficionados – there are those who see him a pioneer and other who think his work dated and the science fiction equivalent of cosy crime. But I think it’s fair to say that within both camps, The Midwich Cuckoo is thought to be one of his most thoughtful and important books.

Many people may well be aware of the story through the film and television adaptations given the more lurid title of The Village of the Damned which focus attention on the ‘menace’ or ‘horror’ of extra-terrestrial children using super-powers to threaten humanity. But, although that set of ideas is certainly lurking there in Wyndham’s novel, the book is in fact a vehicle for the author to try out a range of philosophical ideas about the nature of humanity, how we respond to change and threats and the ability of human beings to come to terms with not being the top of the evolutionary chain. So, Wyndham’s purpose is clearly much wider than simply trying to produce a mainstream piece of science fiction entertainment. But, having said that, there’s a danger that the better elements of the book get over-emphasised and it has to be acknowledged that as a novel it has considerable flaws both in terms of plot and in its stylistic choices.

The small village of Midwich, an unexceptional, sleepy, quintessentially British hamlet is suddenly the focus of a strange event. Anyone approaching the village is immediately rendered unconscious but recovers completely once they can be moved outside the ‘bubble’ of this new mysterious force. Aerial reconnaissance also reveals that a mysterious ‘craft’ appears to have landed somewhere in the centre of this bubble.

Just 24 hours later, the craft has disappeared and the village appears to be back to normal and little harm has come to the majority of the population. The powers that be make a decision to keep this event unpublicised because they fear turning the village into a circus of reporters and snoopers.  However, within weeks it becomes clear that what is being called the ‘dayout’ has had a more sinister and startling consequence when all the women of childbearing age discover that they are mysteriously pregnant – in many cases this is literally miraculous.

Much of the first half of the book then focuses on the way the women try to come to terms with what has happened and for some of the men – led by Zellaby who is an ageing academic and effectively the central character of the book and almost certainly a proxy for Wyndham himself – to discuss the largely unspoken issues the event has raised. How did these pregnancies occur and what do they mean? There is a nod to issues like rape, artificial insemination and parasitic implantation but none of these are really satisfactorily played out and many of these discussion get overtaken by the birth of the children.

30 girls and 31 boys are born and they share common features – fair hair, pale skin and eye colour – which is unusually golden. They mature rapidly and seem to be able to exercise a telepathic power over their parents, forcing them to adopt specific caring patterns that ensure the safety of the children at all costs. Zellaby then discovers that the children share the ability to learn – when one boy learns a skill all the other boys also have that skill and this is similarly true for the girls. Soon Zelleby postulates the view that they are dealing with one boy and one girl but with a consciousness shared across multiple individuals.

He also raises a pretty remarkable ethical and moral debate: these children are clearly not ordinary human children but, like the nest of a bird that has been invaded by the cuckoo, they are now being forced to care for young who have been left by another species. And like the cuckoo they will be capable of destroying and overwhelming their hosts. Faced with such an outcome, is getting rid of that threat by destroying it the right thing to do?

This is the question that keeps coming back as the children grow older and more powerful. Although they seem to only use their powers to protect themselves from harm, it is clear that once they begin to develop more adult aspirations their abilities will make them so superior to ordinary humans that harm is certain to come from the uneasy relationship.

It is also the question that ultimately leads to the explosive denouement. 

Understandably enough the book has drawn criticism for the fact that women – who are after all at the very centre of this story – have no significant scientific or philosophical contribution to make to the discussions that go on around this strange set of events. This is very much a man’s world full of ‘mansplaining’. In this respect it’s very much a book of its time and feels in many ways like a sophisticated script for a 1950s British science fiction movie of the Quatermas and the Pit variety.

Wyndham also makes the odd decision to make the narrator of the book a very minor character who has pretty much no impact on the plot at all but is a marginally engaged observer. I’m not clear why he chose to do that – although its evident that characterisation isn’t one of Wyndham’s major concerns because no-one really gets to become anything other than a part of the story’s mechanism.

Finally, I just have to protest about the absurd notion that the events in Midwich could be kept ‘secret’ and that seemingly no-one of any scientific, governmental or military significance – and, unbelievably, no-one even from the world of newspapers and reportage - seem to think the landing of a spaceship in Midwich was remarkable enough to go there and check out what’s going on. Ultimately, this story of alien first contact is reduced to a little local difficulty that gets used as a backdrop for a bit of philosophical cogitation that leaves more questions hanging than it resolves.

Paperback copies of the book are easily available for well under £5 on the second-hand market and can be bought new for well under £10.

 

Terry Potter

September 2022