"All the reality of a vividly realized nightmare," The Times of London wrote of John Wyndham's terrifying post-apocalyptic thriller The Day of the Triffids, published in 1951. The novel is often labeled science fiction, but it might best be described as a completely unnerving fantasy, even at the distance of half a century- for nothing dates this story of a world rendered helpless by a frightening, unearthly phenomenon. Triffids are odd but interesting plants that seem to appear in everyone's garden. They are curiosities, but little more, until an event occurs that alters human life -- what appears to be a meteor shower, spectacular at first, turns into a bizarre green inferno that has blinded virtually everyone and rendered humankind helpless. Even stranger, spores from the inferno have caused triffids to suddenly take on lives of their own -- large, crawling vegetation that uproot themselves and roam about, attacking humans and inflicting agony. William Masen happened to escape being blinded in the green inferno -- he was hospitalized with his eyes bandaged following surgery -- and he is now one of the few humans left who can see, who can avoid being attacked by triffids, who might be able to save mankind from the chaos and possible extinction threatened by this cataclysm. The Day of the Triffids is generally held to be John Wyndham's finest novel, and it was his first significant work. His style has been described aptly as "speculative fiction." The real power of The Day of the Triffids is not in its pure invention but in its matter-of-fact depiction of bizarre phenomena occurring in the midst of day-to-day life. The narrative voice of William Masen is calm and reasoned throughout as he describes the ongoing nightmare and his attempt to prevail, recalling the struggle from an almost historical perspective. Wyndham tells a mesmerizing story in The Day of the Triffids, one that has lost none of its quiet terror.

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.

 

Giant omnivores, the Triffids, stalk and consume the countryside and humanity in this notable British novel of cataclysm. Humanity faces extinction in a novel which prefigures many of the disaster films of the 1950's and the nightmare scenarios of England's end in the 60's work of J.G. Ballard or Brian Aldiss.

The English novelist John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (1903-69) wrote
his finest work under the pseudonym John Wyndham, though he had at least
seven others, all permutations of his lengthy name. Raised in Edgbaston,
Birmingham, he attended a number of English prep schools and began writing as
a sideline, while trying to make a career variously in law, farming,
commercial art and advertising. He began publishing stories in the early
1930s, many in American magazines, but he did not find his voice as the
writer John Wyndham until he returned from service in World War II.

The world had changed, and it was now gripped by the possibility of a nuclear
apocalypse. Wyndham was fascinated by apocalyptic scenarios, and his 1951
novel The Day of the Triffids transformed him as a writer. His distinctive
approach to fantasy is often classified as science fiction, though its
popularity far exceeds the genre. Following the publication of The Day of
the Triffids in 1951, Wyndham wrote a series of remarkable novels that
include The Kraken Wakes (1953), The Chrysalids (1955), The Midwich Cuckoos
(1957), The Trouble with Lichen (1960) and Chocky (1968) as well as the short
story collections Jizzle (1954), Tales of Gooseflesh and Laughter (1956), The
Seeds of Time (1956) and Consider Her Countless Ways and Others (1961).

Wyndham also wrote under a number of other pseudonyms, and several titles
were released under his name after his death in March of 1969. He remains
best known for the timeless terror of The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich
Cuckoos, the latter inspiring two memorable film versions titled Village of
the Damned.

 

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
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