Paolo Repetto

The children of the invasion A revised contemporary version of the science fiction novel: The MidwichCuckoos, 1957. By "classic" we commonly mean a novel of high literary quality, which has opened new avenues and inspired many imitators, and which can be read and reread years later with not diminished delight. "Children of the invasion" is undoubtedly all of these things. But a "classic" is above all a novel that always reveals new meanings over time, lends itself to new interpretations, gradually leaving a glimpse of a richer intertwining of consonances, intuitions, anticipations. Today, when we think of Midwich women, all "visited" in the same night by an invisible fertilizing angel, Sacred History comes to mind on the one hand, but on the other hand we cannot miss the reference to certain extreme positions of feminism, to certain advanced researches of "posthuman, transhuman" genetic engineering. And that group of children and then boys with disturbing eyes, who all move together, and all act in the same way, how many times have we seen them in the squares, in the discos, in the stadiums of our cities? Many years before young people became a problem, the "classic" Wyndham had already known how to delineate the mysterious, disruptive, alien, futuristic force.

The children of the invasion A revised contemporary version of the science fiction novel: The MidwichCuckoos, 1957. By "classic" we commonly mean a novel of high literary quality, which has opened new avenues and inspired many imitators, and which can be read and reread years later with not diminished delight. "Children of the invasion" is undoubtedly all of these things. But a "classic" is above all a novel that always reveals new meanings over time, lends itself to new interpretations, gradually leaving a glimpse of a richer intertwining of consonances, intuitions, anticipations. Today, when we think of Midwich women, all "visited" in the same night by an invisible fertilizing angel, Sacred History comes to mind on the one hand, but on the other hand we cannot miss the reference to certain extreme positions of feminism, to certain advanced researches of "posthuman, transhuman" genetic engineering. And that group of children and then boys with disturbing eyes, who all move together, and all act in the same way, how many times have we seen them in the squares, in the discos, in the stadiums of our cities? Many years before young people became a problem, the "classic" Wyndham had already known how to delineate the mysterious, disruptive, alien, futuristic force.