The Midwich Cuckoos

[Wyndham] continues to haunt the public imagination… and ask profound questions about the limits of our culture and the foundations of the post-war world * Guardian *
Wyndham’s chef d’oeuvre… a graphic metaphor for the fear of unwanted pregnancies – Margaret Atwood
Exciting, unsettling and technically brilliant * Spectator *
[Wyndham] singlehandedly invented a whole pile of sub-genres of science fiction. It’s as if… he was plugged in to the world’s subconscious fears and articulated them one by one – Jo Walton
Exciting, unsettling and technically brilliant * Spectator *

John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Benyon Harris was born in 1903, the son of a barrister. He tried a number of careers including farming, law, commercial art and advertising, and started writing short stories, intended for sale, in 1925. From 1930 to 1939 he wrote short stories of various kinds under different names, almost exclusively for American publications, while also writing detective novels. During the war he was in the Civil Service and then the Army. In 1946 he went back to writing stories for publication in the USA and decided to try a modified form of science fiction, a form he called ‘logical fantasy’. As John Wyndham he wrote The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned), The Seeds of Time, Trouble with Lichen, The Outward Urge, Consider Her Ways and Others, Web and Chocky. John Wyndham died in March 1969.