War of the Worlds
By H. G. Wells

Wells wrote The War of the Worlds in 1897 and it has become so embedded in our culture that I would expect almost everyone to know the story. How many have read the original though? Most will know it primarily through its film, TV and radio adaptations; a shame because the novel is not only short but a very exciting read.

Some consider Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as the first "science-fiction" novel but to most, Wells' The Time Machine has that honour. At the time, Wells was considered to be writing something called a Scientific Romance but his early books are close to or identical to the modern genre. They really were something new and special.

Under two hundred pages, the book is fast paced and exciting. It introduces many elements and ideas that would go on to have a long life over the course of the Twentieth Century, including technology we can recognise today (even if we are far from its implementation). Technology like : the "black" poison gas the Martians use, the "heat ray" that burns and destroys everything it passes over, a flying machine :

"I believe they've built a flying-machine, and are learning to fly"
I stopped, on hands and knees, for we had come to the bushes.
"Fly!"
"Yes," he said, "fly."
I went on into a little bower, and sat down.
"It is all over for humanity," I said. "If they can do that they will simply go around the world."
He nodded.

What is left for humanity? This book will have shocked and terrorised readers back then as the relentless march of these unstoppable mechanical monsters approaches the capital. Wells does not stint on the horror or shock. I felt the power even today.

And so, from 1897 on into the Twentieth Century, and in a few years the cataclysm for Europe. Europe doesn't need Martians for wholesale destruction with war machines and poison gas. My teenage self would have loved reading this and it would probably instill or fortify a love for books if read at school. A brilliant novel.

The Midwich Cuckoos
By John Wyndham

I remember watching the film Village of the Damned on television when I was quite young and liking it: scary and unsettling. I wish I had read the book it was based on sooner. The film makers did a fairly good job if I recall but the book is better.

Set in a very small English village, Midwich, the whole population has a very mysterious episode where everyone becomes unconscious for a day. A few weeks later, the women discover that they are all pregnant and give birth to "The Children" (the cuckoos of the title). The "Children" (always capitalised in the book) are unusual: precocious, golden eyed and with powerful mind control capabilities. They seem to share a consciousness, the boys separate from the girls. Definitely not human. As they grow and become teens, the full reality and danger of their existence becomes manifest as they protect themselves in a way we cannot fathom or resist.

The villagers take to calling this episode of unconsciousness, the Dayout.

The characters are mostly the sort Wyndham seems to use in his books: middle class and with a common-sense intelligence and capability. The Children are not what they seem but people have a hard time seeing past their appearance. It is a horrifying state of affairs for all, but particularly for the "host mothers", who know the children are not theirs but sometimes have to struggle with their human instincts. Horrifying and unsettling, a situation that is understood clearly by some, particularly an older writer Gordon Zellaby. This might lead to nothing less that the replacement of the human race as masters of the planet.

At heart, a first contact story, it is never actually determined who the Children are or where they come from. This is a book with a great idea and lots of discussion about the ramifications for humanity. I thoroughly enjoyed it.