The Chrysalids

by John Wyndham

When I was quite small I would sometimes dream of a city – which was strange because it began before I even knew what a city was.

‘And God created man in His own image. And God decreed that man should have one body, one head, two arms and two legs: that each arm should be jointed in two places and end in one hand: that each hand should have four fingers and one thumb: that each finger should bear a flat finger-nail …’ And so on until: ‘Then God created woman, also, and in the same image, but with these differences, according to her nature: her voice should be of higher pitch than man’s: she should grow no beard: she should have two breasts… ’ And so on again.

‘if you run away from a thing just because you don’t like it, you don’t like what you find either.

‘But, Uncle, if we don’t try to be like the Old People and rebuild the things that have been lost, what can we do?’ ‘Well, we might try being ourselves, and build for the world that is, instead of for one that’s gone,’

They stamp on any change: they close the way and keep the type fixed because they’ve got the arrogance to think themselves perfect. As they reckon it, they, and only they, are in the true image; very well, then it follows that if the image is true, they themselves must be God: and, being God, they reckon themselves entitled to decree, “thus far, and no farther.” That is their great sin: they try to strangle the life out of Life.’

‘The living form defies evolution at its peril; if it does not adapt, it will be broken. The idea of completed man is the supreme vanity: the finished image is a sacrilegious myth.

‘There is comfort in a mother’s breast, but there has to be a weaning. The attainment of independence, the severing of ties, is, at best, a bleak process for both sides; but it is necessary, even though each may grudge it and hold it against the other.

We have a new world to conquer: they have only a lost cause to lose.’