John Wyndham

Matthew's parents are worried. At eleven, he's much too old to have an imaginary friend, yet they find him talking to and arguing with a presence that even he admits is not physically there. This presence - Chocky - causes Matthew to ask difficult questions and say startling things: he speaks of complex mathematics and mocks human progress. Then, when Matthew does something incredible, it seems there is more than the imaginary about Chocky. Which is when others become interested and ask questions of their own: who is Chocky? And what could it want with an eleven-year-old boy?

Chocky

Matthew introduces his family to his imaginary friend, a creature called Chocky, who is full of questions about space travel and gravity fields that are unlike any an 11 year-old boy would ever think of. So when Chocky starts causing Matthew a great deal of distress, his parents call in the professionals.

Emmett

A short but intriguing situational novel about an imaginary friend who turns out to be an explorer communicating from the depths of space. The incongruously cosy, urban setting makes everything uncanny and acts as (an intended?) counterpoint - the known space to the unknown reaches. The most interesting bit was that the comforts of the time turn hostile at the end and a kind of knowledge/wisdom of something else beyond/under that cushy domestic nest, both of the evils of our world and the potential strangeness of other worlds, is gained. Like most well-written, thoughtful s/f novels, it prods at the foundations of our truth and the limits of our perception. The female characters could've been less annoying; I wanted to sympathise with them but it was difficult.

In Chocky, pioneering science-fiction master John Wyndham takes on an enigma as strange as anything found in his classic worksThe Day of the Triffids or The Chrysalids—the mind of a child. It's not terribly unusual for a boy to have an imaginary friend, but Matthew's parents have to agree that his—nicknamed Chocky—is anything but ordinary. Why, Chocky demands to know, are there twenty-four hours in a day? Why are there two sexes? Why can't Matthew solve his math homework using a logical system like binary code? When the questions Chocky asks become too advanced and, frankly, too odd for Matthew's teachers to answer, his parents start to wonder if Chocky might be something far stranger than a figment of their son's imagination. Chocky, the last novel Wyndham published during his life, is a playful investigation of what being human is all about, delving into such matters as child-rearing, marriage, learning, artistic inspiration—and it ends with a surprising and impassioned plea for better human stewardship of the earth.

Deborah Meades

I read "Chocky" many, many erm... many years ago when I was a child. It stayed with me . Rereading a novel that you loved in the past can be risky but luckily I fell in love with "Chocky" again. Wyndham's last novel, it tells of an eleven year old boy who suddenly has an "imaginary" friend, Chocky. There are many strange things about this imaginary friend resulting in even stranger events. The novel touches on many ,many topics and although written in the late 1960's many of those topics are still relevant today, including references to the moral obligations of the media and the medical professions, the need for sustainable sources of power and the damage human beings are inflicting on this beautiful planet. I picked this edition because of the art on the cover by Grayson Perry but there is also an afterword by Margaret Atwood, which I enjoyed. It is a short novel but well worth a read for any reader whether you enjoy Sci-Fi novels or not.

Matthew, they thought, was just going through a phase of talking to himself. And, like many parents, they waited for him to get over it, but it started to get worse. Then Matthew started doing things he couldn't do before, like counting in binary-code mathematics. So he told them about Chocky - the person who lived in his head.

Chocky

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