When I first read [b:The Midwich Cuckoos|161846|The Midwich Cuckoos|John Wyndham|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1172294996l/161846.SY75.jpg|812592], sixty years ago, I thought it was one of the better sf novels I had read. That was so long ago that I'd forgotten most of it except the main plot outline. Now it reminds me of [a:Arthur C. Clarke|7779|Arthur C. Clarke|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1357191481p2/7779.jpg]'s [b:Childhood's End|414999|Childhood's End|Arthur C. Clarke|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320552628l/414999.SY75.jpg|209414] -- both are about a strange generation of children appearing in the world.

I thought [a:John Wyndham|36332|John Wyndham|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1343316104p2/36332.jpg] was one of the better science fiction writers, though in re-reading [b:The Kraken Wakes|91092|The Kraken Wakes|John Wyndham|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328396359l/91092.SY75.jpg|2760748] I found it rather pedestrian. The Midwich Cuckoos is better, but still slower paced than I remembered.

What I liked about Wyndham's books, however, is the same thing that I liked about [a:Charles Williams|36289|Charles Williams|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1217390107p2/36289.jpg]'s books - they are set in this world. As with fantasy, so with science fiction, I'm not particularly interested in outer space -- the sf books I've enjoyed most have all been set in this world -- [b:Brave New World|5129|Brave New World|Aldous Huxley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1575509280l/5129.SY75.jpg|3204877], [b:A Canticle for Leibowitz|164154|A Canticle for Leibowitz (St. Leibowitz, #1)|Walter M. Miller Jr.|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1450516880l/164154.SY75.jpg|250975] and so on. And I read them all in the early 1960s, and have reread most of them several times since.

But John Wyndham belonged to my father's generation, and now I notice that many popular British novels of the 1940s and 1950s have characteristics that strike me as odd now. Not Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, but John Wyndham, [a:Nevil Shute|21477|Nevil Shute|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1547804311p2/21477.jpg] and others. Apart from all their descriptions of people smoking, they are all conscious of class, and written from as self-consciously upper middle-class point of view, seeing themselves as the "educated class" and the others as uneducated. They often have a Sir Somebody-or-Other in them who is respected for his expertise in a particular field, almost as though one cannot be an expert in anything unless one is a Sir. Wyndham would have been at school during the First World War, and was in the army in the Second, and so in addition to the division between the "educated class" and the rest, there is also a "Service" point of view that the main characters identify with.

Wyndham also now appears to me as sexist, not overtly, but quite subtly so. One of the minor characters in The Midwich Cuckoos has a PhD, and I get the feeling that Wyndham sees her as an oddity. That is a perhaps a generational thing, and perhaps [b:The Midwish Cuckoos|161846|The Midwich Cuckoos|John Wyndham|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1172294996l/161846.SY75.jpg|812592] and [b:Childhood\s Ends] speak of how people of Wyndham and Clarke's generation approached the generation gap.

For more on the generation gap aspect see my fuller article A Dystopian View of the Generation Gap.