Reading Notes on The Chrysalids

Reading Notes: John Wyndham, The Chrysalids
Jan 1, 2009. Transcribed from Twitter.

Reading John Wyndham's post-apocalyptic "The Chryaslids," in which religious orthodoxy takes the form of absolute genetic purity. 11:12 AM Jan 1st from txt

Post-apocalyptic environment creates a new "Age of Wonders." Knowledge and tolerance become heretical. People hide "sins" of deviation. 11:22 AM Jan 1st from txt

The sailor Uncle Axel's account of peoples beyond the radiation-scarred "badlands" suggests that all one finds are different orthodoxies. 11:33 AM Jan 1st from txt

Axel "most of them whether they have seven fingers or four arms or hair all over or whatever is wrong, think their type is the true pattern" 11:39 AM Jan 1st from txt

Thought in reading "The Chryaslids" that it is nature's way to be various and in man's way to restrict variety, both moral and biological. 12:04 PM Jan 1st from txt

In parallel events of normal and mutant births to two sisters (David's mother & aunt), reality that all have mutation, deviance inside them. 12:48 PM Jan 1st from txt

Minister: "Accursed is the mutant, the seed of the devil within, trying unflaggingly, eternally to come to fruition, to destroy divine order” 12:54 PM Jan 1st from txt

David's prayer: "Oh God, please, please God let me be like other people. Won't you make it so when I wake up I'll be like everyone else?" 1:21 PM Jan 1st from txt

The eight Chrysalids, who communicate by ESP, are a step forward in evolution and thus abomination to religion which only looks backwards. 2:08 PM Jan 1st from txt

Living in secret, the Chrysalids envy the "norms": "the stupidest norm was happier; he could feel that he belonged." 5:32 PM Jan 1st from txt

"We had no positive -- we were condemned to negatives, to not revealing ourselves, to not speaking when we would, to not using what we knew, to not being found out -- to a life of perpetual deception, concealment, and lying." 5:37 PM Jan 1st from txt

Discovered, David, Rosalind, Petra are declared "deviants," "non-human and therefore not entitled to rights or protections of human society" 7:51 PM Jan 1st from txt

David explains hatred to Petra: "the more stupid [people] are the more like everyone else they think everyone ought to be. And once they get afraid they become cruel and want to hurt people who are different." "I don't see why," insisted Petra. 8:12 PM Jan 1st from txt

Chryaslids and the "Sealand" people precursors of network society and hive mind in their ability to have "think-togethers" 8:37 PM Jan 1st from txt

Proto-internet: Chrysalids and the "Sealand" people also communicate using a kind of graphic (rather than lingual) interface. 8:43 PM Jan 1st from txt

Inability to think collectively doomed the "Old People": "the more complex they made their world, the less capable of dealing with it" 8:47 PM Jan 1st from txt

Sealand woman explains that the oppressed are confused by their social ties and upbringing but that the oppressors are *not* so confused. 10:00 PM Jan 1st from txt

The oppressors recognize the danger of the "superior variant" and wish to suppress the change that it will bring -- to preserve stasis. 10:03 PM Jan 1st from txt

As David + Rosalind descend toward Sealand (New Zealand) they hear a sound like "the buzzing of a hive of bees." David: "our kind of people" 10:13 PM Jan 1st from txt

Seeing killing as part of the natural order, the Sealanders have no particular sympathy for "lower" creatures or less-evolved humanoids. 10:26 PM Jan 1st from txt

"The Chrysalids" interestingly predictive of not just network society -- even the problem of individuation -- but also posthuman philosophy. 10:31 PM Jan 1st from txt