Oct. 4th, 2019

charisstoma: (Default)
oooooooH
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

https://books.google.com/books?id=aeD2EmxBbuwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+chrysalids&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj99ce24ILlAhUS5awKHcPXAcoQ6AEwAnoECAQQAg#v=onepage&q=the%20chrysalids&f=false

The Chyrsalids is set in the future after a devastating global nuclear war. David, the young hero of the novel, lives in a tight-knit community of religious and genetic fundamentalists, always on the alert for any deviation from the norm of God’s creation. Abnormal plants are publicly burned, with much singing of hymns. Abnormal humans (who are not really human) are also condemned to destruction—unless they succeed in fleeing to the Fringes, that Wild Country where, as the authorities say, nothing is reliable and the devil does his work. David grows up ringed by admonitions: KEEP PURE THE STOCK OF THE LORD; WATCH THOU FOR THE MUTANT.

At first he does not question. Then, however, he realizes that the he too is out of the ordinary, in possession of a power that could doom him to death or introduce him to a new, hitherto unimagined world of freedom.

The Chrysalids is a perfectly conceived and constructed work form the classic era of science fiction, a Voltairean philosophical tale that has as much resonance in our own day, when religious and scientific dogmatism are both on the march, as when it was written during the cold war.
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John Wyndham was a very odd person. He was a middle-class Englishman who lived for most of his life in clubs, without any close relationships. He had a very odd view of women. Yet he singlehandedly invented a whole pile of sub-genres of SF. It’s as if, although he was so reclusive, in the 1950s he was plugged in to the world’s subconscious fears and articulated them one by one in short, amazingly readable novels, which became huge worldwide bestsellers.

https://www.tor.com/2008/10/27/the-chrysalids/
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"Julian Comstock" by Robert Charles Wilson

...Set in a post-apocalyptic future featuring Labrador where things have returned to something closely resembling the nineteenth century. Wyndham’s (1955) Tribulation is nuclear war and we, as adult readers, understand what the characters do not about the lands of black glass and the prevalence of mutations when the wind is from the south. Wilson’s False Tribulation is caused by the end of oil and global warming. To each age its own ending, and I hope in fifty years this catastrophe will seem just as much a quaint thing people worried about back then. The books make a very interesting paired reading, but it wouldn’t be fair to you to keep comparing them extensively when Julian Comstock isn’t even listed, never mind out.


The Spin Saga Trilogy: Spin, Axis, Vortex
By Robert Charles Wilson
https://books.google.com/books?id=cbhWDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Charles+Wilson+-+Julian+Comstock&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjdvN7e7YLlAhVImK0KHT79Dl8Q6AEwCXoECAkQAg#v=onepage&q=Charles%20Wilson%20-%20Julian%20Comstock&f=false


https://epdf.pub/robert-charles-wilson-spin.html

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