The Midwich Cuckoos

by JOHN WYNDHAM | Science Fiction & Fantasy |
ISBN: 0140014403 Global Overview for this book
Registered by noname-blue of München, Bayern Germany on 5/18/2014
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2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by noname-blue from München, Bayern Germany on Sunday, May 18, 2014
After a sudden, unexplainable blackout, all the women in small english village are pregnant. They have been used by aliens to give birth to a group of spooky children - like cuckoos use other birds to raise their children. The powers of the children are a threat - what should be done?

A first for its time, and was made into a famous movie.

Parf the 1001 list.

Journal Entry 2 by noname-blue at München, Bayern Germany on Sunday, May 18, 2014
ETA: I re-read it before sending it on and I still don't like it very much. (The movie based on this book, Village of the Damned, was well-made and creepy, but still has the same problematic implications).

The basic problem is that the author, like a lot of bad Sci-Fi, wants to prove a point by arranging circumstances so that only one outcome is possible, and then use this constructed reality as analogy to current real-life problems. In this book, we're told repeatedly that the children are alien not only in their rapid rate of growth and the "compulsion" they can exert on adults, but also in their lack of empathy and morality. Effectivly they are described as sociopaths, though the term is not used. However, during the first part of the book, we are never shown this, only some instances of the genius and communication between the children.

Part of the problem is that the narrator has no own alien child, because he and his wife were away during the dayout, and they are still not integrated enough in to the village to be close friends with one of the families who do have a Child. So everything is reported indirectly, through one of the mothers or through Zellaby (who is problamtic on his own).
We see one instance that this is not quite true in the first part: a few of the children die of influenza, yet there is no retribution against any adult by the children, contrary to what happens in part 2. So the Children are able to understand that influenza is nobodys fault, instead of lashing out indiscrimnatly.

In the second part, we see the Children re-acting to threats - true, they overreact, but that is also related to the problem of education: although a special school with child psychologists and other experts has been set up in the second part, the main discussion is between a colonel from Military Intelligence, the narrator, a non-expert on children, and Zellaby, who loves to talk contrarily (and engages in page-long diatribes against the softness and indecision of English civilisation in the second part) but is also definitly no expert on anything. These three decide, based mostly on Zellabys observations, that the Children are amoral and a danger.

They declare the problem that they can not teach the children to behave morally because they can't punish the children because of their power of compulsion. That is not only an outdated, but also rather horrible, attitude towards moral behaviour and ethics: that children can only be taught moral behaviour by fear of punishment. This is one of the lowest levels of moral development and should be overcome in a real education with more advanced ethics. Moreover, real experts on pedagogy know quite well how to raise children without punishment. Parents who are bodily handicapped or simply don't believe in authoritarian power, regularly raise well-adjusted children without punishment.

Then there's the whole medical angle that's quite wrong, though part of that might be excused with the progress of medical science since 1957. Still, human women can't simply be used as incubators for alien fetuses: the fertilized egg wouldn't take in the uterus unless the aliens first checked at which part of their natural cycle each woman is, injecting those woman not ready at the moment with the necessary hormones to stimulate the uterus, wait for the effects to take and then implant the eggs.

The aliens also have a very strange attitude towards the host mothers: on one hand, they take the trouble to select woman of the right child-bearing age; but then they leave the women lying where they fell from the unconscious field, despite the possibility of exposure (several people do die from it). Given that the aliens must have taken the trouble of bringing all the women to their space ship, examine them there, implant the babies, why go to all the trouble of bringing the women back into the exact same place, instead of putting them into the next building with a heating system? (Or at least some blankets)?

That also means that the doctor couldn't rule out artifical insemination at the start:if hormonal stimulation is necessary anway, the babies could be half-human by their mothers.

Then, we know today that the human mother is not simply a flower-pot in which the child grows; rather, her system interacts with the developing child, from hormones to the food she eats, and influences the development and expression of the existing genotype to a certain degree. So even if the impregnated eggs were fully alien in their genome, they would be differently and not about 30 identical clones.

This is also why the whole cuckoo analogy falls down: that works between the same species, like birds. The alien Children look human, but they must be human enough to survive in the human uterus, with lots of different chemicals. Yet the children are alien enough to have powers of mind control, and grow at twice the normal rate.

Another case of Zellaby talking big words but completly misunderstanding what he's talking about is hive mind. First, even he admits the children are not one mind times 30, just because they can share information. However, what is called hive mind is only found in the lower orders, that is, insects, for a reason. It's not really an advanced mind, but rather a series of simple reactions hard-coded as instincts that add up to complex reactions.
Mammals and higher animals need to be flexible to react to a changing enviroment and thus have very little born instincts; rather, they rely on learning and intelligence to adapt.
Humans also have a kind of hive mind, or rather, extelligence: knowledge that is important for intelligence is externalised through storage of information.

Also, at the end, the whole "law of the jungle vs. civilisation" argument was tired even in 1957 - after WWII and Hitler, along with modern research on real jungle life, is that the jungle is precisly not about one species ruling another, or lack of cooperation. It's all about cooperation, and occupying different niches.

From the start with the strange field, the story relies heavily on Clarke's Law (Advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic) but breaks a lot of natural and medical laws along the way, which I believe is not what Clarke meant.

Overall, I don't agree with the "us or them, so lets kill the other species because co-existence is for losers, not for advances species" moral at the end, and I don't like the railroading the author does to get there. I also dislike the lenthy ramblings of Zellaby which are mostly wrong from the science standpoint, yet convince every person he talks to, or his half-baked critique of civilisation. Striped from the verbiage, he sounds more like a teenager who has discovered some Superhuman philosophy for the first time than a grown man.

Journal Entry 3 by noname-blue at Wishlist RABCK, A Bookcrossing member -- Controlled Releases on Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Released 9 yrs ago (5/26/2014 UTC) at Wishlist RABCK, A Bookcrossing member -- Controlled Releases

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Sent by mail to the US.

Journal Entry 4 by MyaStone at Stamford, Connecticut USA on Sunday, June 1, 2014
Received today. Sorry to hear you didn't like it. I loved Day of the Triffids and hoped this would be as good.

Journal Entry 5 by MyaStone at Stamford, Connecticut USA on Saturday, July 19, 2014
I liked it. In general Wyndham is one of my favorite sci-fi authors. That being said, I don't mind when the science part of sci-fi does not add up. I am very happy to live in whatever world the author has created, plot holes and all. What can you do, to each his own.

Returning to the 1001 Library.

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