It's possible to put too modern a slant on a novel that remains within the constraints of post-war science fiction, but as Barry Langford points out in his introduction, The Day of the Triffids is 'at heart a strict Darwinian parable' the carnivorous plants are not sentient, malicious invaders from another planet, but the culmination of human hubris.
In 1946 he went back to writing stories for publication in the USA and decided to try a modified form of science fiction, a form he called 'logical fantasy'.When The Day of the Triffids was published in 1951, John Wyndham could hardly have predicted the extent to which genetic meddling would dominate the news half a century on. During the war he was in the Civil Service and then the Army. From 1930 to 1939 he wrote stories of various kinds under different names, almost exclusively for American publications, while also writing detective novels. He tried a number of careers including farming, law, commercial art and advertising, and started writing short stories, intended for sale, in 1925. Wyndham chillingly anticipates bio-warfare and mass destruction, 50 years before their realisation, in this prescient account of Cold War paranoia.Ībout the author: John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Benyon Harris was born in 1903, the son of a barrister. With society in shambles, they are now poised to prey on humankind. The Triffids can grow to over seven feet tall, pull their roots from the ground to walk and kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers. He soon meets Josella, another lucky person who has retained her sight, and together they leave the city, aware that the safe, familiar world they knew a mere 24 hours before is gone forever.īut to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, one must survive the Triffids, strange plants that years before began appearing all over the world.
Removing his bandages the next morning, he finds masses of sightless people wandering the city. Fifty-two years later, this horrifying story is a science-fiction classic, touted by The Times (London) as having 'all the reality of a vividly realised nightmare'.īill Masen, bandages over his wounded eyes, misses the most spectacular meteorite shower England has ever seen. In 1951 John Wyndham published his novel The Day of the Triffids to moderate acclaim.
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