Genre Fiction
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The Day of the Triffids
The influential masterpiece of one of the twentieth century's most brilliant-and neglected-science fiction and horror writers, whom Stephen King called "the best writer of science fiction that England has ever produced."
"[Wyndham] avoids easy allegories and instead questions the relative values of the civilisation that has been lost, the literally blind terror of humanity in the face of dominant nature. . . . Frightening and powerful, Wyndham's vision remains an important allegory and a gripping story."-The Guardian
What if a meteor shower left most of the world blind-and humanity at the mercy of mysterious carnivorous plants?
Bill Masen undergoes eye surgery and awakes the next morning in his hospital bed to find civilization collapsing. Wandering the city, he quickly realizes that surviving in this strange new world requires evading strangers and the seven-foot-tall plants known as triffids-plants that can walk and can kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers.
"[Wyndham] avoids easy allegories and instead questions the relative values of the civilisation that has been lost, the literally blind terror of humanity in the face of dominant nature. . . . Frightening and powerful, Wyndham's vision remains an important allegory and a gripping story."-The Guardian
What if a meteor shower left most of the world blind-and humanity at the mercy of mysterious carnivorous plants?
Bill Masen undergoes eye surgery and awakes the next morning in his hospital bed to find civilization collapsing. Wandering the city, he quickly realizes that surviving in this strange new world requires evading strangers and the seven-foot-tall plants known as triffids-plants that can walk and can kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for John Wyndham
"The best writer of science fiction that England has ever produced."-Stephen King
"Wyndham was a true English visionary, a William Blake with a science doctorate."-David Mitchell
"[Wyndham] did more than any other British writer since H. G. Wells to make science fiction popular. . . . His plots, however fantastic, were characterized by inventiveness, clarity and a profound sympathy for mankind."-The New York Times
"[John Wyndham] singlehandedly invented a whole pile of sub-genres of science fiction. It's as if . . . he was plugged in to the world's subconscious fears and articulated them one by one in short, amazingly readable novels."-Jo Walton
"The best writer of science fiction that England has ever produced."-Stephen King
"Wyndham was a true English visionary, a William Blake with a science doctorate."-David Mitchell
"[Wyndham] did more than any other British writer since H. G. Wells to make science fiction popular. . . . His plots, however fantastic, were characterized by inventiveness, clarity and a profound sympathy for mankind."-The New York Times
"[John Wyndham] singlehandedly invented a whole pile of sub-genres of science fiction. It's as if . . . he was plugged in to the world's subconscious fears and articulated them one by one in short, amazingly readable novels."-Jo Walton
Readers Top Reviews
John MJules
This is a classic novel that was written at the start of the genre of global disaster novels, with others such as On the Beach and Drowned World etc. following on. In this case a 'comet' or an errant missile leads to a light that blinds nearly everybody on the planet. The conditions are therefore set for The Triffids, an engineered plant species developed for its oil, to take over. These are capable of a walking-like locomotion on three specially adapted stems and possess a lethal stinger that the blind can't see coming. The novel follows the central character as he struggles to rebuild in a disintegrating world. It's a story that shows how fragile society is and how easily it could disintegrate in the face of disaster. Strangely, despite the title, it could easily be reworked without the Triffids themselves.
V. G. HarwoodJohn
Anyone who's over a certain age will remember the BBC adaptation of this novel which utterly terrified me as a child. Despite watching that TV series all those years ago though, this is the first time I've made it through this book. I seem to remember trying to read it as a child, and failing (probably too old for me). This time, however, I did enjoy reading the book, despite the fact that some aspects of the novel are dated (the hero's attitude to women very much places this book firmly in the 1950s), this is still a scary book about the end of civilisation as we know it and plants rising up to get their own back on all those pesky humans. I personally think this is a book that is better read as an adult - there is a moment in the text when the hero says that his main feeling about the end of civilisation is "relief". This would not make sense to a child, but to an adult who has been caught in the daily grind for God knows how many decades, I can completely relate to this. I can't think of the number of jobs I've had over the years where I've wished the world would end rather than have to go and do another shift/cope with the stress of another deadline. That said, it is hard to take ambulatory plants seriously as a threat - did they have Round Up in the 1950s? Still, on the whole, I enjoyed the book, and it's worth a read.
FictionFanV. G. H
When Bill Masen wakes up in hospital, he’s surprised that none of the nurses have been along to get him up and ready for the day. It’s to be a big day – the bandages that have covered his damaged eyes for a week are due to be removed and Bill will find out if he can see. He missed the big meteor shower last night – amazing green streaks shooting across the sky in a wonderful light-show – but most everybody else in the world had watched them. Bill is about to discover he’s one of the lucky few... Gosh, I had forgotten just how brilliant this book is! I’m sure everyone has an idea of the basic story even if they’ve never read it or seen a film adaptation, because it’s one of those books that has become a cultural reference point for so much later literature and film. When Bill removes his bandages, he discovers that the vast majority of people have been blinded by the lights in the sky. Only a small number of people like himself who, for various reasons, didn’t see them have retained their sight. It’s a tale of survival in a world turned suddenly dystopian. And with the breakdown of society, the strange walking plants known as triffids have been set free to prey on a suddenly vulnerable humanity. First published in 1951 and set in a future not far distant from that date, it’s one of the finest examples of the science fiction books that grew out of Cold War paranoia. The world’s first nuclear bombs had been dropped just six years earlier, and the arms race between the US and the USSR was well underway, with each building up stocks of weapons which it was believed could destroy the world. Nuclear bombs were only part of that; Wyndham looks at another aspect, perhaps even more frightening – biological warfare, as scientists turned their brains and technology towards discovering new and horrific ways of destroying their nations’ enemies. Man hadn’t yet made it into space, but that achievement was on the near horizon, again as part of the race for superpower status between the two dominant military mights. And, in a seemingly more peaceful and benevolent manner, man was mucking about with nature in ways that were unprecedented – developing new plants, fertilisers and pesticides without much consideration of possible unintended consequences. All concerns that still exist, though we’ve perhaps become too blasé about them now, but that were fresh and terrifying as Wyndham was writing. The joy of this book is that the science horrors are more than balanced by an exceptionally strong human story, with excellent characterisation. On leaving the hospital where he woke up, Bill soon meets a young woman, Josella, also sighted. The book tells their story, and through them of the various ways in which humanity attempts to survive. Wyndham looks at questions of morality and society – should the sighted people try to save the blind, hopeless th...
Christine MacAlis
I first read `The Day of the Triffids` more than 40 years ago, and loved it. Since then I have read it roughly once a year, and find it as newly interesting, exciting and terrifying as I did the first time. Since it was published, in December 1951, there have been numerous books, stories and films which have taken the basic premise of small groups of survivors in a doomsday scenario, and recounted their struggles for survival, but so very few have reached the masterliness of John Wyndham. His style of matter-of-fact understatement is very beguiling, as he details the story of a young man awakening in a strangely silent city-centre hospital, his eyes bandaged after a near fatal triffid sting. Today is the day the bandages come off, but where are the doctors and nurses who should be doing this? After a futile journey across a room he has never seen before, which results in strange shouts and shrieks, Bill Masen, our hero, tentatively removes the dressings on his eyes, and looks out upon a nightmare world in which it seems every other person has gone blind, and the once amazingly useful, but now quite deadly triffids are on the hunt for food.... The writing style is not as modern as, say Lee Child, or, Kim Stanley Robinson, but it flows, smoothly mundane, from one horror to another, giving the reader the sense of shock that the protagonist feels as he fumbles his way around a world totally and terrifyingly unrecognisable from the day before. I thoroughly recommend this novel, and indeed, all the works of John Wyndham. Enjoy.
Violet CrumblesS.
Let me start by saying: I’ve heard of books being “dated” (which this is), but I had never heard of one being “too british”… But this book’s “britishness” almost made it unreadable for me. I actually had to call in John Gielgud for a narration assist on occasion. And this is the AMERICANIZED VERSION (yes, there are two versions), so you can just imagine. As for the story, it’s a bit “Last Man on Earth” meets “28 Days Later”. And it’s a pretty interesting and ok story, especially good for its time. It has quite a bit of symbolism and allusion - with the usual wisdom and warnings from its particular dystopian misadventure. Namely, don’t let the seeds of infiltration and corruption grow unchecked, lest you lose everything and become blind monsters yourself. (And PS: Stop messing with Mother Nature. Your lab is in her hab.)
Short Excerpt Teaser
The End Begins
When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.
I felt that from the moment I woke. And yet, when I started functioning a little more smartly, I became doubtful. After all, the odds were that it was I who was wrong, and not everyone else-though I did not see how that could be. I went on waiting, tinged with doubt. But presently I had my first bit of objective evidence-a distant clock struck what sounded to me just like eight. I listened hard and suspiciously. Soon another clock began, on a hard, decisive note. In a leisurely fashion it gave an indisputable eight. Then I knew things were awry.
The way I came to miss the end of the world-well, the end of the world I had known for close on thirty years-was sheer accident: like a lot of survival, when you come to think of it. In the nature of things a good many somebodies are always in hospital, and the law of averages had picked on me to be one of them a week or so before. It might just as easily have been the week before that-in which case I'd not be writing now: I'd not be here at all. But chance played it not only that I should be in hospital at that particular time, but that my eyes, and indeed my whole head, should be wreathed in bandages-and that's why I have to be grateful to whoever orders these averages. At the time, however, I was only peevish, wondering what in thunder went on, for I had been in the place long enough to know that, next to the matron, the clock is the most sacred thing in a hospital.
Without a clock the place simply couldn't work. Each second there's someone consulting it on births, deaths, doses, meals, lights, talking, working, sleeping, resting, visiting, dressing, washing-and hitherto it had decreed that someone should begin to wash and tidy me up at exactly three minutes after 7 a.m. That was one of the best reasons I had for appreciating a private room. In a public ward the messy proceeding would have taken place a whole unnecessary hour earlier. But here, today, clocks of varying reliability were continuing to strike eight in all directions-and still nobody had shown up.
Much as I disliked the sponging process, and useless as it had been to suggest that the help of a guiding hand as far as the bathroom could eliminate it, its failure to occur was highly disconcerting. Besides, it was normally a close forerunner of breakfast, and I was feeling hungry.
Probably I would have been aggrieved about it any morning, but today, this Wednesday, May 8, was an occasion of particular personal importance. I was doubly anxious to get all the fuss and routine over because this was the day they were going to take off my bandages.
I groped around a bit to find the bell push and let them have a full five seconds' clatter, just to show what I was thinking of them.
While I was waiting for the pretty short-tempered response that such a peal ought to bring, I went on listening.
The day outside, I realized now, was sounding even more wrong than I had thought. The noises it made, or failed to make, were more like Sunday than Sunday itself-and I'd come round again to being absolutely assured that it was Wednesday, whatever else had happened to it.
Why the founders of St. Merryn's Hospital chose to erect their institution at a main-road crossing upon a valuable office site, and thus expose their patients' nerves to constant laceration, is a foible that I never properly understood. But for those fortunate enough to be suffering from complaints unaffected by the wear and tear of continuous traffic, it did have the advantage that one could lie abed and still not be out of touch, so to speak, with the flow of life. Customarily the west-bound busses thundered along trying to beat the lights at the corner; as often as not a pig-squeal of brakes and a salvo of shots from the silencer would tell that they hadn't. Then the released cross traffic would rev and roar as it started up the incline. And every now and then there would be an interlude: a good grinding bump, followed by a general stoppage-exceedingly tantalizing to one in my condition, where the extent of the contretemps had to be judged entirely by the degree of profanity resulting. Certainly, neither by day nor during most of the night, was there any chance of a St. Merryn patient being under the impression that the common round had stopped just because he, personally, was on the shelf for the moment.
But this morning was different. Disturbingly, because mysteriously, different. No wheels rumbled, no busses roared, no sound of a car of any kind, in fact, was to be heard; no brakes, no horns, not even the clopping of the few rare ...
When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.
I felt that from the moment I woke. And yet, when I started functioning a little more smartly, I became doubtful. After all, the odds were that it was I who was wrong, and not everyone else-though I did not see how that could be. I went on waiting, tinged with doubt. But presently I had my first bit of objective evidence-a distant clock struck what sounded to me just like eight. I listened hard and suspiciously. Soon another clock began, on a hard, decisive note. In a leisurely fashion it gave an indisputable eight. Then I knew things were awry.
The way I came to miss the end of the world-well, the end of the world I had known for close on thirty years-was sheer accident: like a lot of survival, when you come to think of it. In the nature of things a good many somebodies are always in hospital, and the law of averages had picked on me to be one of them a week or so before. It might just as easily have been the week before that-in which case I'd not be writing now: I'd not be here at all. But chance played it not only that I should be in hospital at that particular time, but that my eyes, and indeed my whole head, should be wreathed in bandages-and that's why I have to be grateful to whoever orders these averages. At the time, however, I was only peevish, wondering what in thunder went on, for I had been in the place long enough to know that, next to the matron, the clock is the most sacred thing in a hospital.
Without a clock the place simply couldn't work. Each second there's someone consulting it on births, deaths, doses, meals, lights, talking, working, sleeping, resting, visiting, dressing, washing-and hitherto it had decreed that someone should begin to wash and tidy me up at exactly three minutes after 7 a.m. That was one of the best reasons I had for appreciating a private room. In a public ward the messy proceeding would have taken place a whole unnecessary hour earlier. But here, today, clocks of varying reliability were continuing to strike eight in all directions-and still nobody had shown up.
Much as I disliked the sponging process, and useless as it had been to suggest that the help of a guiding hand as far as the bathroom could eliminate it, its failure to occur was highly disconcerting. Besides, it was normally a close forerunner of breakfast, and I was feeling hungry.
Probably I would have been aggrieved about it any morning, but today, this Wednesday, May 8, was an occasion of particular personal importance. I was doubly anxious to get all the fuss and routine over because this was the day they were going to take off my bandages.
I groped around a bit to find the bell push and let them have a full five seconds' clatter, just to show what I was thinking of them.
While I was waiting for the pretty short-tempered response that such a peal ought to bring, I went on listening.
The day outside, I realized now, was sounding even more wrong than I had thought. The noises it made, or failed to make, were more like Sunday than Sunday itself-and I'd come round again to being absolutely assured that it was Wednesday, whatever else had happened to it.
Why the founders of St. Merryn's Hospital chose to erect their institution at a main-road crossing upon a valuable office site, and thus expose their patients' nerves to constant laceration, is a foible that I never properly understood. But for those fortunate enough to be suffering from complaints unaffected by the wear and tear of continuous traffic, it did have the advantage that one could lie abed and still not be out of touch, so to speak, with the flow of life. Customarily the west-bound busses thundered along trying to beat the lights at the corner; as often as not a pig-squeal of brakes and a salvo of shots from the silencer would tell that they hadn't. Then the released cross traffic would rev and roar as it started up the incline. And every now and then there would be an interlude: a good grinding bump, followed by a general stoppage-exceedingly tantalizing to one in my condition, where the extent of the contretemps had to be judged entirely by the degree of profanity resulting. Certainly, neither by day nor during most of the night, was there any chance of a St. Merryn patient being under the impression that the common round had stopped just because he, personally, was on the shelf for the moment.
But this morning was different. Disturbingly, because mysteriously, different. No wheels rumbled, no busses roared, no sound of a car of any kind, in fact, was to be heard; no brakes, no horns, not even the clopping of the few rare ...
