Science Fiction Goldilocks, the Odyssey, SF

On the jacket of his latest science fiction novel, The Midwich Cuckoos (Ballantine, $3.50), John Wyndham is quoted as saying: “I believe there are plenty of people in the world who like imaginative projections honestly carried out, but who get bored to death by scientific exhibitionism. So let us be more implicit and less explicit—let us consider the things that might happen, not to the inhabitants of Uranus, but to us, our friends, the things we know.” I take this to mean that Mr. Wyndham hopes to hybridize SF with the dying Novel.

Who are these people who, like Us and our friends, do not inhabit Uranus? In The Midwich Cuckoos they closely resemble those characters of the light (or heavy) English novel whom we have come to know so well. The deft Agatha Christie creates them with automatic competence. Angela Thirkell devotes whole books to them.

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C. Robert Morse

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On the jacket of his latest science fiction novel, The Midwich Cuckoos (Ballantine, $3.50), John Wyndham is quoted as saying: “I believe there are plenty of people in the world who like imaginative projections honestly carried out, but who get bored to death by scientific exhibitionism. So let us be more implicit and less explicit—let us consider the things that might happen, not to the inhabitants of Uranus, but to us, our friends, the things we know.” I take this to mean that Mr. Wyndham hopes to hybridize SF with the dying Novel.

Who are these people who, like Us and our friends, do not inhabit Uranus? In The Midwich Cuckoos they closely resemble those characters of the light (or heavy) English novel whom we have come to know so well. The deft Agatha Christie creates them with automatic competence. Angela Thirkell devotes whole books to them.