A sleepy village in rural England loses contact with the world for an entire day. Strange and mysterious, yes, but alarming? Not so much, for a bunch of proper British folks who wake up and manage to go about their day; cold, but determined. However, a few weeks later, all the females of childbearing age find themselves pregnant, virgin or otherwise. And the babies all share the same feature: golden eyes. And as time goes on, the village discovers that's not all the children share.
The novel is a classic from 1957. It's a little tricky to get hold of, but well worth the effort. It's one of my personal favorites, written at a time when Science Fiction writers were coming into their own. Wyndham is a little ahead of his time as he writes of moral implications and cultural effects. His style is straight-forward and charming, with little mind to the science of the happening, and more on the results in the lives of people.
The title is intriguing! The immediate association, I think, is "Cuckoo" as though "Nuts", or "Wacko", and it certainly fits. However, as a bird, the cuckoo often lays its eggs in another bird's nest...
And the perfect tea companion to this tale of surrogacy is Irish Breakfast Tea: http://shopstashtea.com/050320.html . The tea is also a little tricky to get hold of, but well worth the effort. It's a black tea, strong like English Breakfast, but with an undertaste of malt that comes along after the initial taste to really deepen the experience. Cream and sweetener make this almost a dessert.
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
Focus on: Trillion Year Spree
Brian W. Aldiss has written a fantastically exhaustive history of Science Fiction. The first edition, titled "Billion Year Spree" was published in 1973. This latest, from 1986, isn't just revised, it's nearly rewritten and twice the original length.
I have to wonder at the possible length it might be were it expanded yet again to include the last 15 years of speculative fiction, and the current--shall I say meteoric?--rise of of the latest names.
Nevertheless, it's a good reference, and what it lacks in direct plot it makes up for in opinionated narrative. His is a viewpoint of science fiction as literature, if it meets the prescribed convention, and suggests we can mine centuries as far back as the 17th to find bits of scientifiction trope.
It's too easy to think of SF as a most recent blip on the literary radar. To place its beginning with "Hugo Gernsback's lurid magazines in the nineteen-twenties" might serve well for nostalgia's sake, but man, specifically writing-man, has been imagining himself among the stars (or beneath Earth's surface), expanding and contracting against his mortal confines for far longer, of course.
One might say SF is the stuff of myth or legend, of science and environment, of exploration and conquer. It has solidified into a genre in the late half of the century, the "fiction of a technological age". But I like the way Mr. Aldiss sets a parameter for it. In his own words: "Science Fiction must call to account our deepest fears and aspirations."
Isn't that really the best of all literature?
I have to wonder at the possible length it might be were it expanded yet again to include the last 15 years of speculative fiction, and the current--shall I say meteoric?--rise of of the latest names.
Nevertheless, it's a good reference, and what it lacks in direct plot it makes up for in opinionated narrative. His is a viewpoint of science fiction as literature, if it meets the prescribed convention, and suggests we can mine centuries as far back as the 17th to find bits of scientifiction trope.
It's too easy to think of SF as a most recent blip on the literary radar. To place its beginning with "Hugo Gernsback's lurid magazines in the nineteen-twenties" might serve well for nostalgia's sake, but man, specifically writing-man, has been imagining himself among the stars (or beneath Earth's surface), expanding and contracting against his mortal confines for far longer, of course.
One might say SF is the stuff of myth or legend, of science and environment, of exploration and conquer. It has solidified into a genre in the late half of the century, the "fiction of a technological age". But I like the way Mr. Aldiss sets a parameter for it. In his own words: "Science Fiction must call to account our deepest fears and aspirations."
Isn't that really the best of all literature?
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