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The Midwich Cuckoos

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The Midwich Cuckoos

By: John Wyndham
Narrated by: Stephen Fry
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About this listen

In the sleepy English village of Midwich, a mysterious silver object appears and all the inhabitants fall unconscious. A day later the object is gone and everyone awakens unharmed - except that all the women in the village are discovered to be pregnant.

The resultant children of Midwich do not belong to their parents: all are blonde, all are golden eyed. They grow up too fast, and their minds exhibit frightening abilities that give them control over others and brings them into conflict with the villagers just as a chilling realisation dawns on the world outside....

The Midwich Cuckoos is the classic tale of aliens in our midst, exploring how we respond when confronted by those who are innately superior to us in every conceivable way.

About the author: John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Benyon Harris was born in 1903, the son of a barrister. He tried a number of careers, including farming, law, commercial art and advertising, and started writing short stories, intended for sale, in 1925. From 1930 to 1939 he wrote stories of various kinds under different names, almost exclusively for American publications, while also writing detective novels. During the war he was in the Civil Service and then the Army. In 1946 he went back to writing stories for publication in the USA and decided to try a modified form of science fiction, a form he called 'logical fantasy'.

©2008 John Wyndham (P)2021 Audible, Ltd
First Contact Science Fiction Fiction Village Thought-Provoking Scary

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All stars
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This is an excellent John Wyndham novel that has barely dated. But the reading by Stephen Fry lets it down. He has chosen voices that really do not suit most of the characters, especially the children.

Fry disappoints

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apart from being a well narrated enjoyable tale this throws up so many queries as to how we should accept and treat those who are different; theories of evolution ,; different perspectives,; so much more than just a story.

so good on so many levels

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I absolutely adored this, forget Village Of The Dammed and certainly forget Sky's recent adaptation, this was a brilliant performance by Stephen Fry of the book written in 1957. If you're expecting something in the style of Stephen King I would suggest you listen to something by Stephen King

The Midwhich Cuckoos

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It's unfortunate that SF is generally taken to stand for "Science Fiction," good SF is much more about speculation' about "What if?" than about science or how or why. I'd never read The Midwich Cuckoos, I'm not familiar with its various film adaptations but its basic premise was familiar to me - after all it's there in the title, we all know what a cuckoo does. Like all great SF it reflects the time in which it was written and the Cuckoos was written and set in post war England, at the height of the Cold War. It's about the benefits and disadvantages of civilisation, about the conflict between "Hawks" and "Doves," it's about ethics and it's about survival. This is a far cry from the mindless "Earth must surrender by midnight" films which fail to spot that "midnight" is a pretty strange concept for an orbiting space craft; nor is it a straightforward War of the Worlds type invasion where the need to fight back is obvious and unquestionable. The Midwich Cuckoos is brilliantly thought out in the logic of it's time (though Zellaby's grasp of Human Evolution seems a bit tenuous) and raises tantalising questions about who we are and what that means for our future.

SF should stand for "Speculative Fiction."

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A must read. I listened to this firstly because of Stephen Fry, the King of narrators. It lead to a love of John Wyndham. This and The Day of The Triffids are now amongst favourites I listen to regularly. I find some of Wyndham's theories on mankind, thought provoking.

A total classic.

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