The Midwich Cuckoos
John Wyndham
Thoughtful classic Science Fiction
I became aware of John Wyndham's classic science fiction novel The Midwich Cuckoos through Seanan McGuire's still-too-new-to-be-classic Incryptid series. One of the main characters of the Incryptid series, Sarah Zellaby, is a nonhuman cryptid telepath of a species of human brood parasites nicknamed "cuckoos." McGuire is open about her intellectual debt to The Midwich Cuckoos; indeed, Sarah chose that name for herself after reading The Midwich Cuckoos.
As a result, The Midwich Cuckoos has been on my to-read list for years. It's a classic, having been published in 1957. That was an interesting time in Science Fiction. The Golden Age of the pulps, with their square-jawed heroes firing ray guns while rescuing improbably voluptuous alien princesses had ended. It was just becoming possible for a science fiction author to earn a living by publishing paperback novels. Freedom from the pulp audience would eventually lead to New Wave science fiction. 1957 was an inbetween time. The Golden Age was over, but it would be more than ten years before the New Wave really took off.
I won't bother summarizing the plot, since the publisher's blurb (specifically, the one by Rosetta Books) does that well. The story-telling feels very like New Wave science fiction to me. Even in the Golden Age there was a prominent strain of philosophical speculation in science fiction. The Midwich Cuckoos is much more thoughtful than action-oriented. There are no ray guns or future technologies. It is commonly classified as horror, but the horror felt very muted to me. It is only science fiction because the cuckoos are speculated to have come from another world.
It's a short novel (220 pages in kindle), and definitely worth the reading, if you're a fan of speculative fiction.
Hah, I became familiar with the Midwich Cuckoos through Seanan McGuire's Middlegame. Now I am seeing how much of an influence it has had on her work! I wasn't thinking of picking this up, cos I'm not big on classic scifi, but maybe I'll give it a shot since it's so short...