[Nesacat]

The Iron Man by Ted Hughes
Hughes was the UK's poet laureate from 1984. He died in 1998. this book begins with an iron giant toppling down a cliff and smashing into bits. The various parts pick themselves up and look for each other and put themselves together again. He eats metal and he makes friends with a boy called Hogarth. The people of Hogarth's town trap the Iron Man in a huge pit since he's out eating all the metal in sight. The earth is then invaded by a huge space-bat-angel-dragon and it is the Iron Man that saves them by battling the creature.

In the end it's a book about being able to live together and finding a way to do that so everyone has what they need, as opposed to want, without harming anyone or anything else.

Here's how the book ends:
And the space-bat-angel's singing had the most unexpected effect. Suddenly the world became wonderfully peaceful. ...The strange soft eerie space-music began to alter all the people of the world...All they wanted to do was to have peace to enjoy this strange, wild, blissful music from the giant singer in space.

The Iron Woman by Ted Hughes
This one is a sequel to The Iron Man and it's my favourite of the two. It's a cry against the pollution of the earth and a wonderful modern myth. The Iron Woman is born of the marshes. She comes in answer to the cries of all that are being destroyed by pollution; the creatures on the land and in the water, even the human children yet to be born.

And she destroys by dancing. A wild, primeval dance. She turns all the men who work at the waste disposal plant into water creatures leaving the women to deal with matters, while their husbands now reside in tubs and ponds and swimming pools. And she teaches everyone to listen to the song of the earth and the cries of pain of all that live on or in it.

"I am not a robot," it said. "I am the real thing."
And now the face was looking at her. The huge eyes, huge black pupils....The whole body was like a robot, but the face was somehow different. It was like some colossal metal statue's face, made of parts that slid over each other as they moved.

Both books are beautifully written and the words flow like water from page to page to page. I guess it comes from Hughes being a poet. It's impossibly to not feel a part of the book. You can see the animals write in pain, hear them screaming. You can feel the wild dance of the Iron Woman and hear the music of the spheres. In the end they books are filled with a great deal of hope.