Out on DVD and Blu-ray now, Keeley Hawes (Rebecca) and Max Beesley (The Outsider) star in the The Midwich Cuckoos, which finds the women of a small town becoming pregnant over one day.

Watch the trailer here…

Based on John Wyndham’s science fiction classic, The Midwich Cuckoos is set in Midwich, a quiet commuter town where nothing much happens. That is, until the twilight hours of a late summer’s day, when everyone within a set area of the town falls unconscious. The curious incident seems temporary and those affected regain consciousness, but every woman of child-bearing age inside the zone has suddenly and inexplicably fallen pregnant. As the children of the phenomenon grow, it becomes clear they are not of this world. 

We spoke to Keeley Hawes recently about the series, and her character Dr. Susannah Zellaby, which, in the original novel, was a male character: “It’s prime for an adaptation and a modern retelling,” she said. “The fact that my character was a man in the original and at the centre of this incredibly female story is very telling and it just wouldn’t seem right to make it in that way now.”

Now you can take home this modern reimagining of a sci-fi classic with our latest competition! We have one blu-ray and one DVD to give away – all you have to do is answer the simple question below to be in with a chance of winning.

This competition closes on 25 August, so get those answers in now. Good luck!

Dazzler Media presents The Midwich Cuckoos on Blu-ray and DVD from 8th August. Read our review here.

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My debut novel, Black Friday 2050, is a dark psychological thriller with a unique premise: what happens when pleasure is used to control our lives? Tech companies are gaining increasing access to our data. What happens when they use that data to manipulate their users and their employees? Is there a way back from psychological control?

One way of making a terrifying premise work is to think of character: a person who is stuck in a world that is actively working against their central desires, and antagonists who impede their progress. Technology plays a subsidiary role to this: what kinds of technology could be used to stop someone exercising their basic freedoms? Dystopias are often about a loss of personal control.

But there’s more than one way that humanity could lose its freedoms. In the list below, I’ve picked out five science fiction books with terrifying dystopian premises, where characters are trapped in situations that are beyond the pale.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

No philosophical work is as terrifying as Ursula K Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. The story begins in the utopian town of Omelas during a summer festival, where the joy and happiness of everyone depends on the suffering and misery of a single child. Omelas is a utopia with a dystopian core, and the central question is one that should trouble us all. How much of our contentment, our joy, is reliant on the suffering of others?  Written in 1973, the book is more relevant than ever. With lithium batteries depending on wars in the Congo, blood diamond wedding rings, and the looming climate catastrophe, our quality of life has never seemed more dependant on other people’s miseries.

Izumi Suzuki, Terminal Boredom

There is something hip and punk about Izumi Suzuki. Her own life story is worthy of a novel: a famous 1970s actress in Japan, married to a jazz musician, and later, a writer of speculative sci-fi stories that ranged from post-apocalyptic to domestic. Terminal Boredom is a collection of her stories from the late 70s and early 80s. The title story is about “old folks” who have boundless energy for work and sex, while young people stay directionless and bored. Another story features a world where men are driven to the edge of extinction, and still another, an abusive alien husband.

John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos

Children are typically associated with innocence, kindness, and naivety. But in John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos, a seemingly alien species impregnates a town – creating a generation of mind-controlling, telepathic, psychotic, blonde wunderkinds with a taste for violence. The kids act aggressively when put in danger and have no problem with mind-controlling adults to their deaths. The novel’s title derives from the cuckoo bird, some species of which are brood parasites, who use the nests of other birds to raise their young.

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

A list like this would not be complete without Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The reason to include this, and not 1984, is that Huxley’s vision more closely matches the reality, and future we currently face. Far from becoming a police state, the western world has drifted towards a state of triviality, disinformation, and mass media culture. In Huxley’s book, people are supplicated into an obedient state by the happiness-inducing drug, Soma.  It is this control through pleasure, rather than punishment, that in part inspired my own novel Black Friday 2050.

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Facing a declining birth rate, the Americans in The Handmaid’s Tale resort to a brutal form of fundamentalist Christianity, demarcating some women as ‘handmaids,’ a perverse form of surrogate motherhood. Atwood’s novel is dark and chilling in many respects, not the least because she based much of the work on existing or historical practices. The terror comes in the form of ideology gone mad, and people swept along with that, including those who would traditionally be considered good and caring. Like others on this list, the novel has only gained relevance over time, with declining birth rates and the increasingly perilous position of women’s rights in many western nations. The book is so terrifying because it may, in fact, come true.

Black Friday 2050 by Joshua Krook is out now in Ebook.

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Indeed, considering John Wyndham’s classic novel has been adapted numerous times since it was first published in 1957 (with probably its most famous adaption being Wolf Rilla’s 1960 horror, The Village Of The Damned), the story of the creepy kids from a remote village is certainly popular!

The Midwich Cuckoos tells the story of the quiet commuter town of Midwich where one evening everyone within a set area of the town falls unconscious. A strange enough occurrence, which only gets stranger when it soon becomes apparent that every woman of child-bearing age inside the zone has suddenly and inexplicably fallen pregnant. As the children of the phenomenon grow, it becomes clear they are not of this world.

Now there’s a fresh adaptation of the story in the form of a brand new TV show, which brings Wyndham’s creepy sci-fi bang up to date: “It’s prime for an adaptation and a modern retelling,” says Hawes who plays Dr Sellaby, a child psychologist which, in the original novel, was a male character. “The fact that my character was a man in the original and at the centre of this incredibly female story is very telling and it just wouldn’t seem right to make it in that way now.”

“I know I’m biased, but I think that this is the best version, because with the other ones, with the book, it’s told from an outside perspective,” agrees Aisling Loftus who plays Zoe, one of the women who become pregnant after that fateful night. “And he’s a visitor to the town. Whereas with this, we’re on the inside of the story, and it’s the blood and the guts of what if this really happened to people. It’s much more fleshed out. It’s modern, and it’s really chilling because of that, I think.”

Also, just like all good genre, its themes still feel relevant today, especially after the pandemic. “The idea of motherhood and this idea that we’re taken over by something quite foreign is maybe quite relatable in a post COVID world,” explains Synnøve Karlsen who plays Cassie, Dr Sellaby’s daughter and another woman who has become pregnant after the unexplained event. “But also, as a woman (and I don’t know having not been through pregnancy, but with lots of friends that are going through them at the moment) it was definitely an interesting parallel. This idea of growing something foreign inside you that’s almost alien-like, that comes out and is so innocent, but then, in this case, that innocence is ultimately what’s questioned and quite eerie about the whole thing…”

After finding out they’re pregnant, the people of Midwich react in varying ways. While some are overjoyed to be pregnant, like Loftus’ character Zoe (who has been trying for a baby with her husband), others are obviously frightened and attempt to abort the unexplained phenomenon growing inside them, which is another element of the show that feels all-the-more relevant now as the subject of America’s recent abortion laws come to the front when we’re speaking to the stars of the series: “This show has been very surprising in that things are becoming relevant since they started developing it,” Hawes says. “Just the fact that we’re talking about parallels with COVID and the scene with [the abortion and] what’s going on in America.

“It’s amazing how a sci-fi show that isn’t based in any sort of reality can have such relevance to things that are going on today. It’s been really interesting talking about it. People are finding relevance. All the characters have different dilemmas and that’s a very difficult one.”

“I think one of the big ideas is autonomy over your own body, especially at the beginning of the series, where all these women become pregnant and it’s ultimately not something that’s up to them,” Karlsen adds. “In America, it’s just something that’s an ongoing battle that comes up time and time again.”

Once the women of Midwich give birth – on the same day no less – they soon realise their children are, unsurprisingly, unique. But what are they? Are they an alien race? Not only do they age at an exceptionally fast rate, but they all have an uncanny likeliness to each other and are able to communicate non-verbally as a hive mind. Even for those who haven’t seen The Village Of The Damned, that iconic look of the blond-haired children on the movie’s posters is hard to forget.

For this adaptation, the similarities between the children are more subtle. Gone are the blond Caucasian children and replaced with a diverse cast whose similarities are in their mannerisms and their penchant for the colour yellow…

“The wonderful Loulou [Bontemps] did the costumes,” says series writer David Farr. “I think they’re brilliant. There are some clever things that they’ve done with the makeup which I almost don’t want to tell you because they’re so brilliant. But they’ve made the children all slightly similar in odd ways, even though they’re different.

“But the big important thing is we wanted them all to be individual, not literally identical. We wanted something heightened and odd and Loulou came up with a very simple idea which was that her governing colours were the colours of the cuckoo shell, which is pale blue and yellow. The yellow is very present and very successful.

“Then each one was characterised very specifically. She asked lots of questions to try and really understand how she could make small differentiations [between each child]. I was really proud. As soon as I saw what she was doing. I was like ‘oh yeah, she’s got it. She’s found something very special here’.”

Even though the story of these creepy children is now 65 years old, the cast of The Midwich Cuckoos hope that Wyndham’s tale once again enraptures audiences by diverting a little from the original text, steering clear of its previous horror adaptations and bringing the story up-to-date, making it still feel relevant and eerily plausible.

“I think [the show feels] different because it feels possible,” Loftus tells of how this adaptation differs to those that have come before. “Whereas the early versions are horror stories, this feels in the way that The Handmaid’s Tale feels possible. If you believe in alien forces – which, we probably all should, shouldn’t we? – I think it’s really unnerving as a story. You just don’t know what’s going to happen. If you’re living with a malign force, you don’t know from one day to the next what they’re going to do. And there seems to be an end game for these Cuckoos, so I think that’s a really interesting thing to follow.”

“It feels different. It’s not like anything else that’s out there,” Hawes agrees. “It doesn’t feel like a horror. It doesn’t feel like out-and-out sci-fi. It’s more nuanced than that. So tonally, it’s quite difficult to describe and put it into a box, which is really good.

“I think it’s one of the shows that will make people have a think and debate. I hope people enjoy it.”

We’re sure they will! The Midwich Cuckoos is available on Sky Max and streaming service NOW from 2 June

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One of the most intriguing and influential science fiction writers of the 20^th century gets The Folio Society treatment with The Wyndham Collection, which pulls together three of John Wyndham’s most famous works, including…

The Day Of The Triffids

When a strange green meteor shower renders most of the Earth’s population blind, Bill Masen is one of the lucky few to retain his sight. With a deserted London in chaos, the Triffids (mobile plants with lethal stingers and an appetite for human flesh), are able to prey on the blind and sighted alike. With nobody to stop their spread, they seem set to take control…

Adapted for both the big screen in 1962 and more faithfully for the small screen by the BBC in 1981, The Day Of The Triffids remains a compelling and understated work of science fiction. It’s a bleak and brutal depiction of a post-apocalyptic world, an undeniable inspiration for the deserted London shots we saw in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later.

The Midwich Cuckoos

The Midwich Cuckoos is set in the sleepy village of Midwich where, following one strange evening, every woman of childbearing age suddenly finds herself pregnant. When the women give birth, it is to a breed of blond-haired, golden-eyed children who grow up too fast and seem to exhibit sinister powers of telepathy.

Adapted, twice as Village Of The Damned in 1960 and 1995, and now set for an eight-part modern-day reimagining on Sky, starring Keeley Hawes and Max Beesley, The Midwich Cuckoos remains an unsettling invasion story, a timeless examination of how society responds when confronted by a superior force.

The Chrysalids

The least well-known, but considered by many to be the best of Wyndham’s work, The Chrysalids is a story of tolerance and genetic mutation in a post-apocalyptic world.

The book is set in the rural village of Waknuk which is populated with puritan fundamentalists, whose fear of a second ‘Tribulation’ drive them to view any mutation as the work of the devil. Desperate to hide their own personal ‘abomination’ from society, David and Rosalind must consider whether it is better to stay within an intolerant society that would shun them or risk it all in terrifying, mutant inhabited Badlands…

Quarter-bound in blocked cloth and a blocked cloth slipcase, this latest release from The Folio Society collects The Day of the Triffids, The Midwich Cuckoos and The Chrysalids all in one box-set. Packed with 21 full-page illustrations from celebrated narrative illustrator Patrick Leger and prefaced by vice-president of the H. G. Wells Society, and Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee Adam Roberts.

Each book’s bold use of shocking colour on the front and inside covers belies the hauntingly retro illustrations within. Leger captures the horror and the humanity of Wyndham’s writing, highlighting the light and shade of our protagonists’ motivations, and much like Wyndham, guiding you to arrive at your own personal interpretation.

Check out our gallery of images from the collection…

Wyndham’s stories have, like The Midwich Cuckoos, invaded and influenced society since the Fifties. Although relatively unknown as a household name, his ability to examine humanity’s past, present and future through the lens of science fiction has inspired many, and the restraint of his writing style has created timeless horrors that continue to be adapted to this day…

The Folio Society’s three-volume set of John Wyndham’s novels, The Wyndham Collection, introduced by Adam Roberts and illustrated by Patrick Leger is available exclusively from www.foliosociety.com

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