The Midwich Cuckoos (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beyn Harris
- First Published: 1957
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Science fiction—evolutionary fantasy
- Time of Work: The 1950’s
- Setting: Midwich, an English village
- Genres: Long fiction, Science fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, Children, Changelings or cuckoos, Villages, England or English people, Consciousness, Intellect
- Locales: England
The Plot
The cuckoo is a bird that lays its eggs in other birds’ nests; in The Midwich Cuckoos, an alien race implants its offspring in the women of a remote English village. The children soon exhibit remarkable powers, centering on their collective consciousness and a Darwinian will to survive. The story is told through the eyes of a writer named Richard Gayford, who relates his own experiences as an inhabitant of Midwich and offers reconstructions of events that occurred while he was away in Canada. The novel is divided into two parts. The first describes events...
[The entire page is 992 words long]
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