In the sleepy English village of Midwich, a mysterious silver object appears and all the inhabitants fall unconscious. A day later the object is gone and everyone awakens unharmed – except that all the women in the village are discovered to be pregnant.The resultant children of Midwich do not belong to their parents: all are blonde, all are golden eyed. They grow up too fast and their minds exhibit frightening abilities that give them control over others and brings them into conflict with the villagers just as a chilling realisation dawns on the world outside . . .The Midwich Cuckoos is the classic tale of aliens in our midst, exploring how we respond when confronted by those who are innately superior to us in every conceivable way.
"This was dramatized quite recently, with Keeley Hawes. They did a decent job, actually. It’s something that’s been dramatized a number of times because it’s such a great story. Margaret Atwood spoke about how she read The Midwich Cuckoos when she was a student, and it freaked her out so badly she had dreams about these evil children for weeks. This story is about how the instinct of motherhood can be subverted by an alien intelligence. Obviously, a cuckoo lays eggs in another bird’s nest. This group of women all give birth to babies who apparently are physically normal, but who can control them, and communicate with each other, and who develop much more quickly than ordinary children. They clearly have their own end in view. It’s about the way the instinct of motherhood can be used against the mothers in this case, but also against the whole community – it feels wrong to look at children and say that they’re evil or they’re other. And yet, in this case, it is actually true: the children are, if not evil, certainly other. It has a lot of resonance, because lots of people feel the new generation is other, that there’s something disturbing about them that freaks us out. I think that idea continues to be current. In this particular story, yes, they really are other. I think it resonates with young people in the same way that Chrysalids does, where they can see themselves as being the other, and that might not be a bad thing."
