15 July 2017
“Children from the sky “ was published in 2012 by Duncan Lunan, astronomer and science writer. The book is illustrated by Sydney Jordan with whom Duncan has collaborated on several of the later Jeff Hawke stories. It can be best described as an elaborately researched speculation on the truth behind a medieval mystery. In some ways it reminds me of a typical Hawke story in that it starts off in a quiet sleepy village in 12th century Suffolk, and ends up dealing with intersteller travel , alien terraforming and the abduction of humans for experimental purposes.
The medieval tale of the Green children of Woolpit is the starting point for Duncan’s investigations. Two children appeared , apparently from nowhere, in the village of Woolpit on an autumn day in 1173. Apprehended by the locals, the children, a boy and a girl, spoke a strange language , were green in colour and wore strange clothes of unknown material. At first they would eat none of the food offered to them and eventually would consume only green beans. The boy died after a short time but the girl thrived and eventually learned to speak the local language. She told how she and the boy came from a world which was forever in twilight but from which a sunlit land could nonetheless be seen in the distance. Duncan has sifted through the encrustation of legend and myth which has inevitably grown about the story over the centuries and has gone back to the original chroniclers who first mentioned this odd event. The first part of the book deals largely with tracing the characters mentioned by the chroniclers and the historicity of the green girl herself which he has established convincingly. The research is meticulous but I think Duncan’s editors could have served him better by putting some of the genealogical research in a separate appendix which would have made the narrative thread a little easier to follow. Nonetheless the theme is exhaustively researched and key protagonists and places are convincingly identified. Having established the Dramatis personae he then goes on the speculate on what the story might mean.
Duncan’s arguments are subtle and complex and I cannot do them justice in such a short piece. But briefly , he has taken all the evidence of the story , the mysterious appearance , the strange clothing and language , the description of the childrens’ world, together with other significant events from the period and from this has constructed an ingenious hypothesis as to what all it might mean, a theory involving a matter transmitter and the terra-forming and colonization ( by abducted humans) of another planet by alien intelligences . Duncan himself writes (p.399) “ I’m not saying that this did happen; only that it might have happened, and wouldn’t it be interesting if it did”.
I will briefly summarise these latter ideas in part two.
“ Children from the sky” is not an easy read but is well worth the effort. As stated above the research is painstaking and the clever speculation is immensely intriguing . It must be regarded as the definitive work on the subject.
Published by Mutusliber it is available from Amazon and other outlets.
ISBN -13: 978-1-908097. Skipper Prossitt
