When the Tripods Came/ The White Mountains/ The City of Gold and Lead/ The Pool of Fire

My sixth grade teacher read this science fiction trilogy (The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire) to our class and it had a profound influence on me. I was thrilled and mesmerized, and when I reread it recently, I was even more impressed.

The story, written by John Christopher in the late '60s, takes place in the future, after giant creatures (called Tripods) have colonized Earth and are using people as work animals. When children reach a certain age (I think it's 10), the creatures surgically attach a cap to their heads, rendering them docile, uncreative, and unquestioningly obedient to the tripods. People live like they did in the 18th century before the industrial revolution. The populace has even come to believe that capping is a good idea (because their thinking is too muddled to really question anything) and have developed a celebratory ritual around capping.

But when the hero of the trilogy gets "capped," the mechanism that's supposed to make him obedient doesn't work, so he is able to clearly see that people are slaves to the cruel aliens. He also learns that there are others like him, and they set out on a journey that they hope will take them to a place where the Tripods don't exist.

You can read these books as metaphor for cultural brainwashing that comes with adulthood, or as straight adventure, or a combination of both. Either way, the series makes for great reading. I just learned that there's a relatively new fourth book in the series, which is a prequel to the trilogy.

Link (ignore the hideous cover art)