John Wyndham

The classic science fiction horror novel of possessed children that inspired the terrifying Village of the Damned films. In John Wyndam’s classically elegant, calm style, this novel explores the arrival of a collective intelligence on earth that threatens to eliminate mankind. The quiet, eerie changes that befall Midwich manifest in strange ways: On the surface, everything seems normal, but scratch a little deeper and there is a clear sense of dread. After the night of September 26, every woman of childbearing age is pregnant, all to give birth at the same time, to children who are all alike—their eyes mesmerizing, void of emotion. These children are innately possessed with unimaginable mental powers and a formidable intelligence. It is these children who develop into an unstoppable force, capable of anything and far out-reaching other humans in cunning. Whatever dwells in Midwich is sowing the seeds for a master race of ruthless and inhumane creatures who are bent on nothing less than absolute and total domination. The London Evening Standard called The Midwich Cuckoos “humane and urbane with a lightly sophisticated wit putting the ideas into shape.” Wyndham skillfully heightens the terror by making his narrative so rational and matter-of-fact. In such a nuclear and technological age, this story is rich in irony in that it is set in the picturesque, bucolic English Village and the “enemy,” or, the threat is seeming cherubim. “Exciting, unsettling and technically brilliant.” —The Spectator

The Midwich Cuckoos

Marta

Each species must strive to survive, and that it will do, by every means in its power, however foul - unless the instinct to survive is weakened by conflict with another instinct.

What these incidents really make clear, my dear fellow, is that the laws evolved by one particular species, for the convenience of that species, are, by their nature, concerned only with the capacities of that species - against a species with different capacities they simply become inapplicable.

'I don't know', Zellaby admitted, 'but I do refuse to accept a bad theory simply on the grounds that there is not a better,(...)'

The Midwich Cuckoos quotes

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