One of my very favourite books, which I've just read again. I'm firmly of the opinion that "The Chrysalids" ranks in the top three science fiction novels of all time - second only to "Nineteen Eighty Four".

The older I get, however, the more I find myself considering it as horror as well as science fiction. The religious beliefs of the norms are so crippling, so inhumane, that they make the rural community a true hellhole, one that pits parents against children, sister against sister... and mutants against themselves. And the truly horrifying thing about the world that belief has created is that it actually works: strict genetic controls are ever so slowly rehabilitating, over generations, what was once nuclear wasteland. No wonder they do it. No wonder.