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

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Zellaby is torn between his fascination with an unknown species; his desire to know more about them, and his dawning knowledge that they will inevitably replace the human race. He has given himself the task of educating the Children, but when it is clear that they learn, and grow at an astonishing superhuman rate, and have abilities unknown to humans, then he deduces that humanity itself is under threat. Other countries have experienced the same phenomenon, and four other colonies have been planted and grown world-wide. All have either died or been destroyed. Clearly neither species will allow the other to survive, yet both politically and ethically, nobody wants to be the ones to destroy these Children. Bernard Westcott, who works for Military Intelligence, is keen to find a way forward, but the ethical issues within the political situation defeat him. The babies grow into extraordinarily bright toddlers. Alarmed, sensing something definitely "off," Gordon Zellaby conducts experiments on these exceptional but odd toddlers and concludes, gulp, they don't have individual consciousness; rather, the 31 boys partake of one general consciousness (they share memories, learning skills and a hyper-awareness) and the 30 girls partake of another similar unified consciousness.

This is my 2018 Halloween read and I chose it off an internet list of this century's best horror novels. This is also the book that the films Village of the Damned is based on. One was 1960 and the other was 1995. I have yet to see either. 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. If we remember that the majority of feminine tasks are deadly dull, and leave the mind so empty that the most trifling seed that falls there can grow into a riotous tangle, we shall not be surprised by an outlook on life which has the disproportion and the illogical inconsequence of a nightmare, where values are symbolic rather than literal.The other thing John Wyndham avoided LIKE THE PLAGUE was any talk of young teenagers becoming pregnant. There were, it seems no girls under the age of 18 in this village. Da normalerweise die Originalvorlagen viel mehr Tiefe aufweisen als die Verfilmungen, war ich gespannt, wie es mir mit dieser Erzählung aus dem Jahr 1957 ergehen würde.

Another enjoyable weird tale by Wyndham, who brought us The Day of the Triffids (which everyone thinks they know how the story goes until they read it and find out about all the blind people...). In this book - wait - you can tell from anything ever written about it including the blurb - but, if you managed to avoid and are extremely sensitive to "spoilers" please get off at the next stop, ok?

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Biology (4th edition) NA Campbell, p. 117 'Fixed Action Patterns' (Benjamin Cummings NY, 1996) ISBN 0-8053-1957-3

radio production - An adaptation by Graeae Theatre Company was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 31 December 2017 and 7 January 2018. [17] The Children themselves form two basic entities - male and female - split into 61 "components". By the end they have lived for nine years, look sixteen, and have immeasurable intelligence. The characters in the novel assume a working formula of a 16 year old human's multiplied by the power of 30, but both they and we know that any human comparison is useless. Here Boy speaks for all the Children, trying to explain their position as they request to be moved elsewhere, and thereby putting off the inevitable confrontation between species which would lead to humanity's extinction. After one day, the effect vanishes, along with the unidentified object and the villagers wake with no apparent ill effects. Some months later they realise that every woman of child-bearing age is pregnant with all indications that the pregnancies were caused by xenogenesis during the period of unconsciousness that has come to be referred to as the "Dayout".

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Though even he can’t stop the carnage that’s set to come as fires break out and when the adults turn on the Children, they use their abilities to force the villagers to harm themselves instead of them. It then emerges that the Children aren’t the only ones of their kind to arrive like this, with similar occurrences happening around in the world. 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. Months pass and nothing happens. Then slowly the villagers realise that every woman of childbearing age in the town has become pregnant. As a result, 61 children are born – all on the same day – and each child has the same golden eyes and white-blonde hair. 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: