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The Day of the Triffids
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Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
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3/5 stars
This is one of the few books in which I saw the TV show first before reading the book. It was not my plan but I put the TV show in my Netflix queue, in last place mind you, and of course it was delivered. I watched the 1981 British TV series staring John Duttine.
On the night of the green flashes, those that watched became blind and those that did not were spared their sight. Triffids are walking plants that had deadly stingers. The story follows Bill Masen, a sighted man, in this apocalyptic world where chaos reigns. Science fiction is one of my least favorite genre of literature. I have read one other Wyndham book Midwich Cuckoos which I enjoyed.
“He had also established that the infertility rate of triffid seeds was something like 95%.”
“Which”, he remarked, “is a damned good thing. If they all germinated, there'd soon be standing room only, for triffids only, on this planet.”
“I tell you, a triffid's in a damn sight better position to survive than a blind man.”
“Take away our sight,” he had said, “and our superiority to them is gone.”
This is a classic science fiction novel about plants that are taking command of the world and comets or satellites that are causing people to go blind. It was innovative and exciting, and I think that any fan of either horror or science fiction would love it. I am a fan of neither genre but certainly found this one unique and more enjoyable than expected.I will say that in my opinion the "world has gone blind" storyline was better don in Jose Saramago's book Blindness. However, I have to wonder if Mr Saramago wasn't inspired in part by this novella.
3.5 stars
I listened to this one on audio in Spring and enjoyed it. The uniqueness of the triffids as a horror, and the quality of the unfolding of the story were great. However, I did read a great criticism(by Brian Aldiss I believe) about his book calling it something akin to a comfy dystopia that exists to fill this space where people can romanticize and fantasize about having their own little corner of the world without law and responsibility (something that I think a lot of dystopia- particularly apocalypse and zombie media fills now) without saying anything profound about society or systematic collapse/survival. And while I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing on an individual story level, I do wonder if this story has helped establish that narrative as a larger trend.Also, there was definitely some misogyny and other elements happening I was less comfortable with. Particularly the ableism present in how the blind are portrayed as helpless and also to a large extent leeching off of the seeing. Like, how would the events of the story have been dramatically altered by focusing on a character that has been blind from birth? Such an individual would likely have an advantage within the context of the story, yet that is not how the author seems to treat blindness at all.
Surprisingly, this is a Wyndham that I hadn't read previously. I was (am) a fan of his work, particularly in my teens. It always interests me to read vintage science fiction that, at the time, must have seemed way out there - ......'invasive/dangerous plants"....., ......'biological warfare'....., ......humans facing food scarcity on a large scale"...... crazy man! Now the drivers of this story seem completely on point, and sadly not crazy at all.
I found the story to be well written and very readable. I thought the first person perspective was effective. 5*
A bunch of people wake up one morning having gone blind, after a bizarre event the night before involving flashes of bright light that seemed like maybe an odd comet or something. Similar to Saramago's novel Blindness, this novel looks at how society deals with mass sudden blindness, and of course most of the people in this book handle their sudden disability with histrionics and rash decisions that hasten the collapse of society as they know it. I was somewhat impressed at the remonstrations by one of the characters in this book to one of the female characters that women do not actually need men to do science, engineering or mechanical things, because women are perfectly capable of these things. He insists that women are lazily opting out of work they dislike because they know men will do these jobs for them, which I suppose is true, whatever complications society attaches to these areas of knowledge wrt gender. And, while the majority of the story comes across as far too ableist, treating blindness as somehow worse than death and a tragedy that the majority of British people can't deal with despite being the same people who endured the bombings during WW2, there are a few spots where blind people pop up who were blind prior to the 'comet' and they pointedly are ok despite being blind,
I was not thrilled with this novel, but it was pretty good for classic sci-fi. I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads.
This classic post-apocalyptic or dystopian novel set in England post WWII finds man at the mercy of aggressive plants. There are satellites in space and the possibility of biological and radiation warfare from space. The biologist, Bill Mason has been in the hospital with bandages over his eyes after a poisonous encounter with the triffids that are being raised for oil. He feels like he is the only one who is missing out on the light show from the comet outside his hospital window. In the morning, no one brings his breakfast and no one comes to remove the bandages. When he finally removes them himself he finds that life on earth has changed and thousands are sightless. This is a survival adventure, but it is also a warning of environmental disaster on a global scale. The book written in 1951 reflects Cold War paranoia. I remember this paranoia. It was taught to us in our classrooms. Another emerging topic of the fifties was women’s roles, this book has themes of gender roles as well as types of societal communities and which is most likely to survive a global disaster. Most of all, this is an easy but entertaining read.