Chrístõ’s Chrysalids is the start of a new era for Chrístõ. He can’t be a prince of the universe anymore. He is stranded on Beta Delta IV and even his job as a diplomat is gone while Gallifrey is under enemy occupation and there is no diplomatic corps.

So he gets a job. As a teacher. He buys a car and calls himself Chrístõ de Leon. His identity is stripped little by little. But he has to find himself a new life, because the alternative is to slowly vegetate in his room.

The idea that all fifteen of his students are telepathic is possibly stretching credulity. Or is it? The idea that human beings are continuously evolving was actually the subject of a new items only last week. That some humans might evolve with psychic powers is not unreasonable. It is, in fact, the theme of the Wyndham book that is a theme of this story. The psychic children in that story, are not aliens but ordinary Humans, born of Human parents, who are the evolved future of Humanity. Chrístõ’s Chrysalids are the same. They do, of course, live in the 24th century. Humans have taken a lot of strides. That’s just one of them.

Originally, I was going to have a sinister reason why the Chrysalids were put together in the class together. There was a paragraph at the end which suggested somebody wanted them trained in telepathy and telekinesis and was watching their progress. I had in mind something in the line of using the children for espionage or some such idea. I might even go with a story like that eventually, but I took out the paragraph that set that up. I really wanted to imply that Chrístõ had found a source of happiness that didn’t have any undertones. Unfortunately, taking that away means that there isn’t any obvious reason for the Chrysalids being together. It just looks like coincidence.

A Bildungsroman, incidentally, is literary form – also found in films and TV series, that concentrates on the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the protagonist usually from childhood to maturity. David Copperfield is a classic example. Theta Sigma, in the sense that Chrístõ is a youth feeling his way to manhood is also a Bildungsroman, but I’m not getting too hung up on that.

The name of the school came to me while I was writing this story. New Canberra High School. My first primary school was called Canberra Road school. For that reason I have always known that the capital city of Australia is Canberra, and often corrected adults who got it wrong. I named Julia's school after it in fond memory. Later, I decided to call the town New Canberra as well. Why not?

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/299886

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chrysalids

http://www.wikisummaries.org/The_Chrysalids

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman