The Chrysalids
The Chrysalids (United States title: Re-Birth) is a science fiction novel by John Wyndham, first published in 1955 by Michael Joseph. It is the least typical of Wyndham's major novels, but regarded by some as his best. An early manuscript version was entitled Time for a Change.
The novel was adapted for BBC radio by Barbara Clegg in 1982, with a further adaptation by Jane Rogers in 2012. It was also adapted for the theatre by playwright David Harrower in 1999.
Plot summary
A few thousand years in the future, post-apocalypse rural Labrador has become a warmer and more hospitable place than it is at present. The inhabitants of Labrador have vague historical recollections of the "Old People", a technologically advanced civilisation which existed long ago and which they believe was destroyed when God sent "Tribulation" to the world to punish their forebears' sins. The society that has survived in Labrador is loosely reminiscent of the American frontier during the 18th century, with a level of technology in use similar to the Amish of the present-day United States.
The Chrysalids (radio)
The Chrysalids was an adaptation of the John Wyndham book of the same name, produced as a Radio Play by the BBC in March 1981. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on the 25 April 1981 with an audience of 150,000 listeners. The play was edited into three half hour episodes and broadcast in Canada by CBC Radio from 10 June to 24 June 1983. (There was a new adaptation of the book by Jane Rogers in 2012, broadcast in two one-hour episodes on BBC Radio 4.)
CD release
The Radio Play was released on CD as an Audiobook in 2007. It was entitled The Chrysalids & Survival and contained the original 1981 version of the Chrysalids and the 1989 BBC radio 4 adaptation of John Wyndham's Survival.
Back cover synopsis
"Ten-year-old David is a happy, ordinary boy, untroubled except for occasional strange dreams about a mysterious city - until he befriends Sophie, who is unlike anybody he has met before: she has six toes. But in the ultra-religious village of Waknut, all abnormality is abhorred as an offense against God, and he must keep her secret to himself. When he learns that he, too, is 'deviant', he realises that differences can be very dangerous indeed..."
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