John Wyndham: The Day of the Triffids (1989, Listen for Pleasure)
Unknown Binding
Published Dec. 31, 1989 by Listen for Pleasure.
When Bill Masen wakes up blindfolded in hospital there is a bitter irony in his situation. Carefully removing his bandages, he realizes that he is the only person who can see: everyone else, doctors and patients alike, have been blinded by a meteor shower. Now, with civilization in chaos, the triffids - huge, venomous, large-rooted plants able to 'walk', feeding on human flesh - can have their day.The Day of the Triffids, published in 1951, expresses many of the political concerns of its time: the Cold War, the fear of biological experimentation and the man-made apocalypse. However, with its terrifyingly believable insights into the genetic modification of plants, the book is more relevant today than ever before.
[Comment by Liz Jensen on The Guardian][1]:
As a teenager, one of my favourite haunts was Oxford's Botanical Gardens. I'd head straight for the vast heated greenhouses, where I'd pity my adolescent plight, …
When Bill Masen wakes up blindfolded in hospital there is a bitter irony in his situation. Carefully removing his bandages, he realizes that he is the only person who can see: everyone else, doctors and patients alike, have been blinded by a meteor shower. Now, with civilization in chaos, the triffids - huge, venomous, large-rooted plants able to 'walk', feeding on human flesh - can have their day.The Day of the Triffids, published in 1951, expresses many of the political concerns of its time: the Cold War, the fear of biological experimentation and the man-made apocalypse. However, with its terrifyingly believable insights into the genetic modification of plants, the book is more relevant today than ever before.
[Comment by Liz Jensen on The Guardian][1]:
As a teenager, one of my favourite haunts was Oxford's Botanical Gardens. I'd head straight for the vast heated greenhouses, where I'd pity my adolescent plight, chain-smoke, and glory in the insane vegetation that burgeoned there. The more rampant, brutally spiked, poisonous, or cruel to insects a plant was, the more it appealed to me. I'd shove my butts into their root systems. They could take it. My librarian mother disapproved mightily of the fags but when under interrogation I confessed where I'd been hanging out – hardly Sodom and Gomorrah – she spotted a literary opportunity, and slid John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids my way. I read it in one sitting, fizzing with the excitement of recognition. I knew the triffids already: I'd spent long hours in the jungle with them, exchanging gases. Wyndham loved to address the question that triggers every invented world: the great "What if . . ." What if a carnivorous, travelling, communicating, poison-spitting oil-rich plant, harvested in Britain as biofuel, broke loose after a mysterious "comet-shower" blinded most of the population? That's the scenario faced by triffid-expert Bill Masen, who finds himself a sighted man in a sightless nation. Cataclysmic change established, cue a magnificent chain reaction of experimental science, physical and political crisis, moral dilemmas, new hierarchies, and hints of a new world order. Although the repercussions of an unprecedented crisis and Masen's personal journey through the new wilderness form the backbone of the story, it's the triffids that root themselves most firmly in the reader's memory. Wyndham described them botanically, but he left enough room for the reader's imagination to take over. The result being that everyone who reads The Day of the Triffids creates, in their mind's eye, their own version of fiction's most iconic plant. Mine germinated in an Oxford greenhouse, in a cloud of cigarette smoke.
[1]: www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice
Content warning Spoiler alert.
The plot is a bit spoiled as the novel served as inspiration for the equally disturbing/terrifying movie "28 Days Later", though there are no zombies in this one. More than one heartbreaking scene in this book, so reader beware.
Where and when you find a book will determine your view of it. For me it was 1973 on my family's little farm at Canowindra. I was ten, I loved Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators and the Brains Benton mysteries. My Mum and older brother were digging John Wyndham so I picked up "The Day of the Triffids", aware that it was an "adult" book, a new experience for me. I think it might have blown my tiny mind. I was like Dave Bowman, a normal human when I started, and an embryonic trans-galactic starchild by the end.
Nowadays, whether it's "Station 11", "The Last of Us" or "Sweet Tooth" the apocalypse is front of mind. But back then there was "Triffids" and George Stewart's "Earth Abides", written in 1951 and 1949 respectively. After that, there'd be a long time between (fictional) world-shattering catastrophes. These two are the ones to beat …
Where and when you find a book will determine your view of it. For me it was 1973 on my family's little farm at Canowindra. I was ten, I loved Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators and the Brains Benton mysteries. My Mum and older brother were digging John Wyndham so I picked up "The Day of the Triffids", aware that it was an "adult" book, a new experience for me. I think it might have blown my tiny mind. I was like Dave Bowman, a normal human when I started, and an embryonic trans-galactic starchild by the end.
Nowadays, whether it's "Station 11", "The Last of Us" or "Sweet Tooth" the apocalypse is front of mind. But back then there was "Triffids" and George Stewart's "Earth Abides", written in 1951 and 1949 respectively. After that, there'd be a long time between (fictional) world-shattering catastrophes. These two are the ones to beat in the post-apocalypse sub-genre.
"The Day of the Triffids" has so much going for it... the marvelously original nature of the catastrophe; the addition of the triffids as its unlikely second wave; the role of industry and military in both these disasters; the reality of re-establishing agriculture and manufacturing when scavenging becomes impossible; the competing rebuilding strategies, be they military or science based, regressive or progressive; the relative futility of redundant moral positions, like monogamy.
The main female character, who pre-apocalypse had been a controversial author of mainstream erotica, is another great Wyndham woman. Yet again the influence of the author's partner Grace Wilson is in evidence. In a short novel, characterisation is handled economically. The relationship between Masen and Josella is beautifully complemented by the arrival of their adopted daughter Susan, giving the book a bit more heart than much SF of the time.
It's also the kind of apocalypse where the survivors are like the chosen ones. Much as mass death and disease are not fun, you can't help imagining what it would be like to be one of the survivors. I don't think this makes it what Brian Aldiss called a 'cosy catastrophe'. There is a certain sentimentality in the novel, as the characters say goodbye to the old world as they see it decaying. It's a sort of warm, loving sadness, but it is not 'cosy'. I get the sense that there was a bit of generational rivalry between Aldiss, as a representative of the 60s new wave, and Wyndham, a pre-war pulp alumnus, albeit one who tried to be innovative and forward-looking like the 60s writers who came after him.
I can't think of a single quibble about this book. I don't think it's dated, unless you also think "The Time Machine" or "The War of the Worlds" are dated because of their contemporary setting.
Grand classique
