Huxley and Orwell are not the only modem writers 1 the future and seen disaster. But neither in Brave New World 2 in 1984 3 . It plays a major part, however, in The Planet of the Apes and its sequel (at least 4 the film versions taken from Pierre Boulle's original book are concerned). In Boulle's story there was a planet where apes and men had changed 5 in society. In the films, however, this theme was linked to 6 . 7 more topical. The astronauts eventually realized that they have returned to Earth two thousand years later. If men have resigned themselves 8 the slaves of apes it is because of a nuclear catastrophe. A more subtle treatment of the same theme occurs in John Wyndham’s novel, The Chrysalids. The hero is a boy growing up in a strict puritanical community rather like a pioneering settlement in the American West. Only as the novel develops 9 that the strange laws of the community, 10 that babies born with any physical abnormality are immediately killed, are hardly explicable in 11 . What 12 a community in northern Canada 13 of years after an atomic war. Here the effects have been comparatively light but the boy’s uncle, who has been a sailor, tells him of voyages south where 14 but blackened ashes. Wyndham, in spite of 15 seem to you like total pessimism, has a message of hope, too. The boy, 16 his cousin, the girl he loves, and a few friends, 17 telepathic gifts. Their ability to read 18 saves them from his father's anger and they make mental contact with some people in a place called Seeland, which has also escaped 19 effects of the holocaust. When the children appeal for help, the Seelanders rescue them. Seeland, 20 , is what we call New Zealand.