Victorian Battleship Model

I saw a model ship from Victorian times in a military Museum in Norfolk as I drove along the coastal road back to my home in the Fenlands. It was a pleasant surprise because the museum had a little more to look at than I expected.

In one section I saw a number of model boats. One of them HMS Hornet of the Dreadnought class or just pre-Dreadnought. I wrote a pastiche novel of H.G.Wells' War of the Worlds. It is called: The Last Days of Thunder Child. Although in my book, Thunder Child is visualised as a ship looking more like HMS Devastation the HMS Hornet, the models figures of the sailors on board would look the same. I loved the look of the superstructure and the wheel house and the figure standing about in their RN uniforms of the era.

I could not help but excitedly snap the model in order to get a look at the sailors aboard. It sets my old imagination going into overdrive.  

To my further delight, I saw a paddle steamer called the Waverly. This little boat still exists and goes all around the British Isles to various seaside locations each year. When I lived at Southend-on-Sea she often came to the pier and took people out on excursions. I based the paddle steamer on the one in H.G.Wells' War of the Worlds when I wrote the Thunder Child pastiche story. Therefore, I had to click all. I have the image of the sailors aboard HMS Hornet for the uniforms of the day, the paddle steamer Waverly (re-named Southend Belle) for the fleeing boat full of refugees and the model of HMS Devastation for my mind's image of the fictitious  HMS Thunder Child.  

The model of HMS Devastation with her short barrelled muzzle loading guns are what I imagined Thunder Child to look like. Outdated, even in 1898, but able to pack a punch for the people on the paddle steamer in the Last Days of Thunder Child.

John Wyndham - The Midwich Cuckoos (SciFi at its best)

I enjoyed this novel so much and John Wyndham's gripping style of writing is at its best during this wonderful science fiction story. I could not put it down. I have enjoyed many of John Wyndham's fantastic science fiction stories - The Chrysalids, and The Day of the Triffids among others. All great, but this - The Midwich Cuckoos is the best of all, in my humble opinion. 

The feel of the story and its location show the reader how difficult the situation is for the villagers of Midwich. We also see how the outside world is nothing more than an impotent spectator as the unearthly phenomenon evolves and grows with terrifying credibility over the years. The actual writing style is superb and gripping from beginning to end. A smashing SciFi story with a 1950s/1960s Retro British feel. 

Everything about the uncanny tale allows the reader to feel so personally involved (as an impotent onlooker) and marvel at the ways of the villagers as the try to adapt to the sinister fate that has befallen them. One person, in particular, is the patient learner. He politely observes and works out a way around the complex and dreadful situation of the village of Midwich. What an absolute climax at the end. I love science fiction in all forms, but this is my absolute favourite SciFi story of all time.

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This was my favorite John Wyndham story until The Midwich Cuckoos. The Chrysalids is a story set in a dystopian future around a coastal area of Canada (I think) The people struggle to live in a post apocalyptic world. They have regressed back in time and live like the old Pilgrim Fathers of America. They farm and ride about on horses and are deeply religious. The society is of an extreme christian and fundamental belief. They indoctrinate all that God sent tribulation because the old people were evil and made atomic bombs and machines - things that were abominations.

When babies are born, they are strictly examined to make sure there is no mutation upon the infant's anatomy. If there is, the child is taken to the fringes away from the Good lands. Here the mutant infant, if it survives, is brought up by the Outcast mutants.

Into this fundamental Christian society, a group of infants slip through the net. They are not normal but have no physical defects. Yet they are telepathic. It is something they must keep secret or risk being outcast and sent to the Fringes among the mutants where the girls are wickedly sterilised before being sent away.

It is a moving and very clever story with some great and very tense moments. I can't think why it has never been made into a film.