The Midwich Cuckoos, by John Wyndham is an especially engaging science ficon novel. The tle refers to two things, a ny ficonal English village called Midwich, and the pracce of cuckoos laying their eggs in other birds' nests in order to have their chicks raised by others. This comes into play in the novel when the village of Midwich becomes the target of an alien invasion of sorts. A spherical field encircles Midwich, and everyone within falls instantly asleep. People who try to enter the field fall asleep, unl they are dragged out physically (with a rope, for instance), at which point they awaken. This effect centers on a silver object at the center of the effect. Aſter exactly one day, the effect and the object disappear. But then all heck breaks loose when it is discovered that every woman in the village of child-bearing age is pregnant. Even virgins. Everyone. At first it's a running joke in the region, but it gets really serious when the births start happening. All the "dayout" children are similar in coloring and general appearance, sharing no traits with their parents. They age at an accelerated rate and they have powerful telepathic abilies. They are segregated, for the most part, oſten voluntarily. They seem to pair off naturally, although because one of the Midwich women was already pregnant during the "dayout" there is an uneven number of boys to girls. When an outsider causes an accident to one of the children, the children use their telepathic powers to cause the outsider's death. Events quickly get very grim and serious. It becomes obvious that the children's insnct for self-preservaon is highly acute. A rampaging mob of villagers wielding the obligatory pitchforks and torches aack the children's school. Well, the children have none of that and cause the individual's in the mob to violently aack each other. The government gets involved and learn that several other instances of this xenogenesis have occurred around the world. In an Inuit village, though, the children were all killed instantly when they were obviously not their own children. In Siberia, the children and their surrogate mothers were killed because they were though to be having congress with devils. In fact, in none of the other situaons in which the aliens aempted to impregnate women, were the children allowed to survive. Only in good old England were the children allowed to survive, seemingly projecng a contrast between the Brish treatment of their young with that of other peoples around the world.