Wyndham loved to address the question that triggers every invented world: the great 'What if. I knew the triffids already: I'd spent long hours in the jungle with them, exchanging gases. I read it in one sitting, fizzing with the excitement of recognition. 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'd shove my butts into their root systems. The more rampant, brutally spiked, poisonous, or cruel to insects a plant was, the more it appealed to me. 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. However, with its terrifyingly believable insights into the genetic modification of plants, the book is more relevant today than ever before.Īs a teenager, one of my favourite haunts was Oxford's Botanical Gardens. 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. 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. The story of what happens is told here by one of the few people lucky enough to escape the disaster:- (original cost 2'6).When Bill Masen wakes up blindfolded in hospital there is a bitter irony in his situation. But when a sudden universal disaster turns those conditions upside down, then the triffids, seizing their opportunity, become an active and dreadful menace. So long as conditions give the mastery to their human directors, they are a valuable asset to mankind. The triffids are grotesque and dangerous plants, over seven feet tall, originally cultivated for their yield of high-grade oil. Not only does he make his story seem scientifically possible, but the characters he creates are living people shaken out of the civilization they know into the horror of a world dominated by triffids. It is fantastic, frightening, but entirely plausible for John Wyndham combines an extraordinarily inventive imagination with the technical skill of a first-class writer. Penguin Books #993:- Synopsis: 'The Day Of The Triffids' is one of the very few books of its kind that can stand comparison with 'The War Of The Worlds', 'The Time Machine', and the other astonishing science-novels of H G Wells. © 1951: A stand-alone novel by John Wyndham.

Day of the triffids penguin