I'm slowly pulling my library into order. It's big enough that I have to break it into sections - reference, science, cartoons, autographed, general fiction, and unread. Yeah, that's right, I have a whole bookshelf dedicated to stuff I have yet to read but totally plan to.
The book "Chocky" by John Wyndham had been sitting in the unread pile for a long time. Probably on the order of years.
I wasn't familiar with the work of John Wyndham. Turns out he's the same guy who wrote "The Day of the Triffids" and "Midwich Cuckoos" which has twice been made into movies called "Village of the Damned".
The book is told from the perspective of a middle aged man. Skipping all the back story... His son has what appears to be an imaginary friend. Being science fiction we know there's more to it than just that. The friend is really a being named Chocky. It can transport it's mind from it's home galaxy to other planets and visit young and open minds. This is done partially as a way to try to find habitable planets to colonize in an effort to escape their own dying star and partially to help coax certain members of the civilizations they contact to develop some of the advanced technology of Chocky's people. Specifically, they feel that a civilization needs to be able to draw off of the infinite background energy of the universe.
Most of this we don't learn until late in the book. The bulk of the story talks about the problems that the kid has. He keeps asking his teachers advanced questions prompted by conversations with Chocky. He learns to paint and swim with Chocky's help. After an emergency swim lesson that he needed to keep his sister from drowning the press got ahold of him and started writing stories about guardian angels. That's when Chocky figured out how far over the line he'd gone with his guidance of the kid. He had to pretend to leave so the kid would think Chocky was gone. This way when someone kidnaps the kid and pumps him for information about Chocky and their technology the kid really thinks Chocky is gone.
It was also made into a mini-series in England back in the 80's. Spielberg picked up the film rights sometime late last year.
I'm not calling this book a great work of literature, but it does make me want to pick up a few other of Wyndham's books.
3 comments:
The title makes me think of chocolate... Now I want chocolate.
Personaly i didn't enjoy this book!
It dragged on for to long. -Daisy 13
I have to agree with Daisy, I think that the story could have progressed much quicker. I found it quite boring because of the long descriptions and lack of action.
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