Will I love The Midwich Cuckoos?

Science fiction and horror go together like a gourmet meal and vintage wine. No one combined them better than the English writer John Wyndham. I was introduced to his fiction in a high school English class, and this was the first prescribed text I gobbled up rather than plodded through.

Horror doesn’t work unless you care about the protagonists, and Wyndham creates an idyllic village populated with relatable characters before introducing the book’s alien interlopers. Also, ‘pregnancy gone wrong’ is one of my favourite tropes and usually it involves body horror, but this is pretty much bloodless—pure, paranoid… show more.

Really, what could be more uncanny than dozens of golden-eyed children conceived while an entire town was unconscious? To say nothing of the not-so-subtle complications of nature versus nurture as their mothers attempt—or avoid—bonding with their strange, unwanted progeny. 

From the mid-century English setting to the focus on male narrative perspectives, Wyndham contrasts what’s normal and abnormal, human and “other,” with a simple tale that spawns (pun intended) a fear of perfect, emotionally disconnected children who cannot—or will not—be loved. A classic, through and through.

I find The Midwich Cuckoos chilling as it describes how the survival instinct of an alien species overrides any attempt to cohabit with or integrate it. 

The story describes the consequences of the day a spacecraft lands and what happens during that day in which time stands still. Months later, every woman of childbearing age is confirmed as pregnant. The sixty-one resulting children bear no resemblance to their parents. They exhibit common physical characteristics and develop far faster than human children. They use their telepathic abilities to protect each other and control the minds of others. They react to perceived… show more.

What’s worse than an evil child? Try a whole gang of alien telekinetic children who insinuate themselves into ordinary women’s wombs while they’re stricken unconscious. Wyndham’s sci-fi/horror book is a seminal classic and has been filmed several times, and it’s easy to see why. The destruction of a quiet (and rather uptight) British village at the hands of the coldly clinical children is terrifying fun, and the ending, in which the villagers attempt to defy their new overlords, is perfection.