The Midwich Cuckoos: Now a major Sky series starring Keeley Hawes and Max Beesley

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Inventing the character of Professor Gordon Zellaby allows this novel to explore scientific hypotheses such as xenogenesis, or the supposed production of children who are markedly different from either of their parents. The narrator Richard Gayford has many indepth discussions with Zellaby, who is prone to philosophical digressions. He tends to soliloquise as he ruminates on various biological mechanisms. "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." Hitherto the spirit of Midwich had been not ill-attuned with that of the burgeoning season all around. It would be too much to say that it now went out of tune, but there was a certain muting of its strings. Sinopsis: Durante veinticuatro horas, el apacible pueblecito de Midwich, perdido en la campiña inglesa, se ve inmerso en un hecho insólito: una invisible cúpula de fuerza lo aísla del resto del mundo, y todos sus habitantes pierden la noción de lo ocurrido en aquel lapso de tiempo. Pero esto será sólo el principio. Pasado el fenómeno, otro hecho no menos insólito viene a turbar de nuevo la paz: todas la mujeres del pueblo descubren repentinamente que están encinta… y nueve meses más tarde dan a luz unos extraños niños de ojos dorados. ¿Quiénes son, cómo han llegado a nacer, cuál es su origen, qué peligro pueden representar? Muy pronto empiezan a descubrirse sus extraños poderes, que culminarán, nueve años más tarde, en uno de los más terribles enfrentamientos, y darán origen a un problema moral de difícil, casi imposible solución.

The book is also narrated by a rather faceless character in the village. Apart from the fact that he was out of town on the night of the unexplainable incident and was vaguely acquainted with a military man investigating the incident, he doesn’t have any major part in the story and it seems odd to have such a bland character telling the story. I would have preferred it to be told from a third person point of view. The people of the village are terrified shit and manage to control the situation somehow but still are unable to prevent the inevitable. I am glad I read it as a classic because no matter how strongly it failed to terrify me out of my wits, this book does shower light philosophically on the condition of humans. And also tells that how much a need is there for man to be politically correct even in the rightest of situations! Well well, I liked reading this book. A remake of the 1960 movie was made in 1995 by John Carpenter and set in Midwich, California; it featured Christopher Reeve in his last film role before he was paralysed, and included Kirstie Alley as a government official, broadly comparable to Gordon Zellaby and Colonel Westcott respectively. An easy read, at first glance, with dated language and characters. But there is more to it than meets the eye. The only reason this book didn't get slapped with one star is because it contains an awesome premise -- a staggering golden nugget of an idea alluded to in its clever title -- that has gone on to embed itself in popular culture influencing many authors and filmmakers since its original publication in 1957. The Children of Midwich are phenomenally creepy, the ramifications of their existence fraught with peril presenting a terrible, terrifying dilemma. I can dig that. British filmmakers dug that very thing and turned it into the unnerving and unforgettable classic Village of the Damned (1960).

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The Children are aware of the danger and use their power to prevent aeroplanes from flying over the village. During an interview with a Military Intelligence officer, the Children explain that to solve the problem they must be destroyed. They explain it is not possible to kill them unless the entire village is bombed, which would result in civilian deaths. The Children present an ultimatum, they want to migrate to a secure location where they can live unharmed. They demand aeroplanes from the government. Un tranquilo pueblo británico, Midwich, sufre un extraño evento .Todos sus habitantes se desvanecen y sufren un periodo de inconsciencia. Terminado este periodo recuperan la conciencia sin efectos aparentes. Sin Embargo a los meses los habitantes descubren que todas las mujeres del pueblo en edad fértil están embarazadas. The Military Intelligence department learns that the same phenomenon has occurred in four other parts of the world, including an Inuit settlement in the Canadian Arctic, a small township in Australia's Northern Territory, a Mongolian village and the town of Gizhinsk in eastern Russia, north-east of Okhotsk. The Inuit killed the newborn Children, sensing they were not their own and the Mongolians killed both Children and mothers. The Australian babies had all died within a few weeks, suggesting that something may have gone wrong with the xenogenesis process. The Russian town was recently "accidentally" destroyed by the Soviet government, using an atomic cannon from a range of 50–60mi (80–97km). I really enjoyed this retro sci-fi book. It was very interesting. Of course, you have what is now seen as "old-fashioned" discourse on the differences between men and women, such as: The Children can also control the minds of the people around them, meaning they soon become too much to handle for the parents of the village. They’re handed over to be cared for by Professor Gordon Zellaby in an institution run by the Ministry of Defence. Under the guise of learning and development, The Children are observed under his watch but this is when things start to turn spooky.

This book seemed more sci-fi than horror to me and is about a night where all the village women in a small community become pregnant after a night of deep sleep and the discovery that a flying ship had landed close to a laboratory. The women are merely hosts and 31 or so children are born and look identical with luminous yellow eyes. As they grow they develop physically and intellectually very rapidly and seem to share one consciousness....I will stop there as ominous things begin to happen to the village folk. It starts off by establishing the uneventful normality of the village. With dawning awareness of what has happened, most people indulge in denial and eventually a degree of acceptance. The abnormal becomes normal, and things get stranger still. Again, such a masterfully constructed tale. Spoiler alert: I'll touch on a number of revelations made in the course of the plot; however, I suspect many readers are already familiar with the happenings in Midwich, at least in broad outline. Quite interesting, as a thought experiment, and ending on an ambiguous note. Is trust good or bad? Should the individual or the collective be valued more? This book is one of the classics of Science Fiction. It is a well written book that is at times a slow moving story told in tremendous detail in more of a British style of writing than in the American style of get to the point now. The book was written at a high intellectual level in tremendous detail that makes the story well-written but at times almost lethargic and boring. I still liked the story but many people will not care for the style in which it was written.In this book, the small, sleepy English town of Midwich falls asleep by force one night. When the people awaken, nothing seems amiss except for a huge depression in the ground where perhaps an alien craft once stood.

Even allowing for the setting, my credulity was a little stretched by the villagers’ generally low-key reaction to something as sensational as xenogenesis. One of the young women has a fiancé who is an Army Officer stationed in the North of Scotland. She writes to tell him she is pregnant but doesn’t know how it happened, and he apparently accepts this explanation. Hmmm! How do we react to threat, especially when said threat comes from something our every instinct tells us not to harm? Is the collective worth more than the individual well-being, should our moral barometer overrule our biological instincts? I loved that the other locations where the same phenomenon of host-mothers took place reacted so differently from Midwich in dealing with the situation, which illustrated an interesting and broad scope of possibilities. Although this novel is class-ridden, and the women's roles are very much of their time, it is told with a wry humour which I had forgotten in the aftermath of all the adaptations. The first of these goes by the name of "Village of the Damned", from 1960, and was followed shortly by a sequel "Children of the Damned". John Carpenter then remade "Village of the Damned" .in 1995. All these are good chilling films, but they are bound to lose the feel of the original text. It is a masterstroke by Wyndham to set this novel in the specific place - and time - that he did. You may not care for the parochialism, or the fuddy-duddy characters, but the claustrophobia and conservatism of a small village in England perfectly sets off the stark issue of basic survival. Zellaby said, this struggle is a "fight that goes on perpetually, bitterly, lawlessly, without trace of mercy or compassion." The character of Gordon Zellaby is a construction by John Wyndham, a mouthpiece to convey his important message, "It is because nature is ruthless, hideous, and cruel beyond belief that it was necessary to invent civilisation." And if civilisation breaks down, what then? Things come to a head when tragedy strikes: riding along a lane in his car, a villager, young Jim Pawle, turns a corner and accidentally runs over one of the Children. The Children's response is immediate and extreme: they cause young Jim to accelerate and crash into a wall, causing instant death. The law can place no blame on the Children. Dissatisfied with the verdict, Jim's brother grabs a gun and takes aim at the Children but immediately turns the shotgun on himself and fires.

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The first mysterious occurrence is what people in Midwich refer to as the "Dayout," - within a certain invisible boundary surrounding Midwich, all living beings - humans, cows, birds, et al.- slump to the ground unconscious for a considerable time and thereafter regain consciousness with no apparent ill effects. Some months afterwards, Midwich women discover they're pregnant and eventually give birth to a batch of babies with striking physical traits, including distinctive golden eyes. Equally alarming, none of the children have their mothers' features.