Some people complain about old age but I don't....not when you consider the alternative.
Some people complain about old age but I don't....not when you consider the alternative.
Member since:09.01.2003
Reviews:94
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John Wyndham is best known for “The Day of the Triffids”. Although “The Midwich Cuckoos” (filmed as “The Village of the Damned”) and “The Chrysalids” under review here, also attracted considerable interest.
Wyndham is an interesting, very British, science fiction writer. He does not deal in fantasy worlds with hosts of unfamiliar creatures battling each other for control of galaxies. Wyndham’s novels may not be parochial but they are very much earthbound, with a rogue element introduced which creates the dramatic conditions for his novels.
In the case of “The Chrysalids” Wyndham is concerned with a post nuclear holocaust scenario – the novel was written in 1955 when the Cold War threat was a very real one – where the effects of radiation have devastated much of civilisation and created a fragmented series of civilisations with little contact with each other.
Starting off as what appears to be a textbook children’s book, a lonely boy looking for new playmates who chances upon a little girl with six toes – the story soon takes off with the background of fear of mutants and a drive for a purity of race in imitation of the “Old People”. A bible-bashing but technologically primitive culture has developed in what is revealed as Labrador. Fearing mutations, any deviations from the norm, from the accepted “image of God” are ruthlessly extirpated. Whilst these deviations are largely physical the protagonists of the novel are children who are able to communicate telepathically with each other even at considerable distances and soon realise they must keep this secret or face being treated as mutants themselves.
With the treatment of suspected deviations being pitiless – even fields of abnormal crops are burnt – the children have no option but to act as a cabal to protect each other but in growing up they find that the problems of interacting with “norms” gets more complicated and endangers their very survival.
Wyndham seems to be suggesting, as indeed many other science-fiction writers have done over the years, that it is the mind which offers the greatest possibilities of bettering humanity. He is also, amusingly for a writer, questioning the accuracy of expression of oral and written language. A society which could think together could act together with greater unity and effectiveness. At the same time he is condemning the tyranny of orthodoxy and warning against mankind’s folly in creating weapons over which they lose control.
A satisfactory rather than brilliant novel – my personal Wyndham favourite is “The Kraken Wakes” – which I believe most general readers and science-fiction lovers will enjoy.
I read this is a new quirkily-covered paperback edition (bought at Waterstone’s) published by Penguin, priced at £7.99.
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Sep 4th, 2004
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