The niece is having a go at some dystopian fiction: John Whyndham's 1955 novel The Chrysalids. I read this book in junior high school and found it pretty interesting at the time. I haven't read it since, but picked up a copy at a used book store a while ago, planning to reread it at some point (I haven't yet). The Chrysalids is set in a post-apocalyptic Labrador, where people live pre-industrial lives following what we assume was a nuclear holocaust... numerous characters have physical mutations such as six toes, etc. The surviving people have turned to a weird type of fundamentalist Christianity in which they believe everyone must be in conformity to the norm, or they risk a wrathful God bringing another Tribulation down upon them. To this end, they practice eugenics, killing, sterilising, or banishing any people or animals who have any abnormalities or deformities. This makes for an interesting read- as I recall- but it is, of course, flipping reality on its head. Here in the real world it is the leftists who are proponents of eugenics, arguing in favour of aborting babies with Down Syndrome and other defects, for example. It is Christians- and other people of faith or good conscience- who stand against this. It is also leftists who generally try to enforce conformity to their opinions by destroying the reputations and livelihoods of any who oppose them. But of course, Wyndham was a leftist/socialist type himself, so unlikely to paint his own political side in a negative light. Typical.
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