The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)

The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)

Author: John Wyndham | Page Count: 241

"You know, my dear, while it's proper for us to be concerned, the responsibility for a remedy isn't ours. If it ever was, and that is highly questionable, the authorities took it away from us a long time ago."

Wikipedia classes the 1950s as a 'transitional period' in the history of science-fiction literature, sitting between the 'Pulp' of the 20s and 30s and the 'New Wave' that gained popularity in the 1960s and 70s. It may lack a classy name, but the 50s wasn't short of genre classics.

Isaac Asimov's I, Robot (1950) and its first two sequels; Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953); Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End (1953), Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination (1956); and Wyndham's own The Day of the Triffids (1951) are some examples. Sci-fi literature fans will probably recognise them all.

I don't feel that The Midwich Cuckoos is quite as good as most of the books mentioned above, but it's certainly worthy to occupy a shelf directly adjacent them, as its enduring popularity proves.

The Lost World + Return to the Lost World (1992)

The Lost World + Return to the Lost World (1992)

Dir. Timothy Bond

One of my favourite books as a child was a 1981 Ladybird Children's Classics edition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1912).

It was a small hardcover edition, heavily abridged (52 pp) with storybook illustrations by Martin Aitchison throughout. I must've read it at least 40 times over the years. The edition I had came with an audio cassette of someone reading the book aloud, with music and sound FX at appropriate times - meaning everyone in the household could 'enjoy' my reading of it, too.

It didn't birth a lifelong love of dinosaurs, which is something that many kids from my generation have, but it did contribute to a lifelong love of books and of storytelling, in general.

That in itself is reason enough for me to want to feature the story on the blog in some capacity.  I chose a movie version, for reasons. And for additional reasons, it was the 1992 version.