PENGUIN BOOKS
THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS
John Wyndham was born in 1903. Until 1911 he lived in Edgbaston, Birmingham, and then in many parts of England. After a wide experience of the English preparatory school he was at Bedales from 1918 till 1921. Careers which he tried included farming, law, commercial art, and advertising; he first started writing short stories, intended for sale, in 1925. From 1930 till 1939 he wrote stories of various kinds under different names, almost exclusively for American publications. He also wrote detective novels. During the war he was in the Civil Service and afterwards in the Army. In 1946 he went back to writing stories for publication in the U.S.A. and decided to try a modified form of what is unhappily known as 'science fiction'. He wrote The Day of the Triffids and The Krak en Wakes (both of which have been translated into several languages), The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as The Village of the Damned), The Seeds of Time, The Outward Urge (with Lucas Parkes), Trouble with Lichen, Consider Her Ways and Others and Chocky (1968), all of which have been published as Penguins. John Wyndham died in March 1969.