Having watched the two film versions, when I looked for the novel that had inspired the horror classic tale of the kids with the shining eyes that oblige the inhabitants of Midwich to kill themselves, I was surprised by the type of story I found. I was expecting an action-packed novel with a more elaborate insight on the origins of the "cuckoos", but by the time I had approached the end, I actually had more questions than answers. The story does not concentrate on the origin of the children and their clash with the inhabitants of the village. They play an important role, but more importantly than that is the moral dilemma the people from Midwich have in their interactions with anthropomorphic beings that are clearly not their offsprings, but that were brought in the villagers' homes.
The children do not even act like children, they are highly intellectual machines with the ability to control minds, especially when they feel threatened. Yet, they seem to overreact and have no sense of compassion, which earns them enemies that try to stop them at any costs. In the novel, a few prominent characters who play the role of the voice of reason, discuss the way they can solve the problem with the "cuckoos". They are aware that in a more primitive society, in this case, Innuits, the children and their surrogate mothers were exterminated when the kids were just newborn babies vulnerable to physical attacks. The Innuits justified the attack by judging the children as a product of physical contact with demons. In the communist Russia, where the state's welfare must prevail over any individual's wellness, the whole village, which is mentioned to be at least twice more populated than Midwich, is destroyed with heavy armaments to make sure that no "cuckoo" was able to survive and control more minds.
Zellaby, our most prevalent voice of reason, makes the decision to give an end to the moral dilemma of ending the life of the children, by taking advantage of the respect they seemed to have for his ability as an interesting lecturer. The story is more or less similar when we compare the film versions with the novel, but the novel lacks the spectacularity of a few images present in both film versions. Most times everything is told in the first person and the actions taking place just seem to be narrated as if they had happened a couple of weeks before. There is even a discussion on the right minorities have to live and prosper when they settle in already-established communities. The Midwich Cuckoos is a classic sci-fi story that I feel glad I read in order to go deeper on the spectacularity of seeing a bunch of kids manipulating the minds of simpleton villagers. I should write a sequel that takes into account the prevalent questions of minorities' rights and migration, which are paramount in our modern world.
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