The Chrysalids

Español
Esta es una novela corta de ciencia ficción que se desarrolla en un mundo post apocalíptico en el que la humanidad lucha por reconstruir todo lo perdido durante una gran catástrofe, sin embargo, aquello perdido no es tan claro ya que la humanidad sobreviviente no cuenta con registros de las diversas tecnologías del mundo moderno. A todo esto, se le añaden unos elementos muy a lo X-men, así es, mutantes.

Ame demasiado este libro, me encanto, mi única queja va a ser que no tenemos más libros de este tema.

English
This is a science fiction short novel that takes place on a post-apocalyptic world in which humanity struggles to rebuild everything lost during a great catastrophe, however that what was lost is not so clear since the surviving humanity does not have records of the various technologies of the modern world. To all this, some very X-men elements are added, that's right, mutants.

I loved this book too much, I loved it, my only complaint is going to be that we don't have any more books on this subject.

An intelligent little book about difference and the way it is perceived.
In Wyndham's post-nuclear world any mutants are destroyed or are cast out by the religious tribes who strive to maintain the norm.
Our narrator, David, has an invisible difference that puts him, and his friends, at risk. But what if there's a place where they would be accepted?
Published in 1955 it feels just as fresh as anything written today and would fit well into the popular YA bracket.
An enjoyable, quick read that I'm bound to return to again and again.

“Words have to be chosen, and then interpreted; but thought-shapes you feel, inside you ....”

“And again there were no words. Words exist that can, used by a poet, achieve a dim monochrome of the body's love, but beyond that they fail clumsily. My love flowed out to her, hers back to me. Mine stroked and soothed. Hers caressed. The distance – and the difference – between us dwindled and vanished. We could meet, mingle, and blend. Neither one of us existed any more; for a time there was a single being that was both. There was escape from the solitary cell; a brief symbiosis, sharing all the world ....”

I did enjoy this story (the 3 stars wasn't a 5 for any negative reasons) - it's pretty well paced, and discusses some particularly interesting ideas – and at the time I read this book whilst I was also reading [b:A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes 30135182 A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived The Stories in Our Genes Adam Rutherford https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1462740264s/30135182.jpg 50566865] which is pertinent to the subject matter The Chrysalids covers: genetics.This particular edition was also prefaced with an introduction essay, which I feel like I'm cheating when I read, because it explains core concepts much more explicitly and throughout the story, these ideas are provided additional context for me.The story follows David and his struggle to fit in in the world (or certainly his world). The planet has been ravished by something that has scrambled DNA across all life, and humanity (as we meet it in the start of the book) is holding dearly onto “pure” existence. “Pure” being applied to crops, animals and humans, or “man”. The result of a non-pure human (an extra toe or misshapen bones or perhaps an extra chromosome?) leads to that individual being sent to the “Fringes”, perhaps even exiled to the Badlands, or just murdered. For intolerance.Except David does not fit in, and the community is ultimately fearful of change and they religiously to stem it's progress. The thing is: life is change.—One of the more poignant moments (to me) was between David and his uncle (who is sympathetic to “Deviations”), where his uncle questions the ideas and definitions of “pure” and “pure man”, and how it is horribly flawed. This entire exchange prompted me to consider what we, in our society and our communities accept as written in stone. And perhaps I'd do well to remember that just because something “is” doesn't mean it should be.—A character that I struggled a little with, was Sophie. Her character early in the story was strong and inquisitive about the world. When we meet her much later in the story and in life, she knows what she wants, but her wants are limited to the world she now exists in. Specifically she works to protect her position as the raped partner of the head of her tribe. Sophie's character is possibly the most heartbreaking, and I wish she had been able to escape her destiny.Yet, when David, his cousin Rosalind and his sister Petra escape to a new land at the end of the story, the intolerance exists in this new community, though it seems the only difference is that they know that they will be succeeded eventually (and not without putting up a fight).

I read this perhaps more than once in the 1960s and/or 1970s, but I don't think I read it again until just recently. It's a dystopian story, and I tend to avoid dystopias, because I like to be happy, and dystopias don't cheer me up.

I managed to plod through this one. Fortunately, it's a short novel, and there's a happy ending.

The dystopia is actually quite interesting and thought-provoking, although it's set in a far future that none of us will see, apparently long after a nuclear war devastated most of North America at least, and probably most of the rest of the world. The world is very slowly recovering, and humanity is very slowly recovering too, but the small community we visit has a religious dread of mutations, even those that are harmless or possibly beneficial.

The happy ending is flawed in a couple of ways, which I may not have noticed when I read the story long ago.

1. Only three of the characters actually benefit from it.2. The rescuers from far-away New Zealand could just have been nice people, and that would have made a pleasant ending. Instead, they turn out to be as ruthless in their way as the society that the chrysalids are fleeing. I don't see what good that does to the story.

This is a fairly memorable book (I still remembered the outline of the story some 50 years after last reading it), well done in some ways, and I was thinking of giving it three stars, but the flawed ending deprives me of a full reward for plodding through the dystopia, so I'll give it two.