The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham

Title: Day of the Triffids Author: John Wyndham Pubished: 1951 I picked up ithis book in the library the other day simply as something to read whilst waiting for a friend in a coffee shop. As it turned out i got a lot more than the mildly diverting sci-fi that I was expecting! "Day of the Triffids" begins with the main character, Bill, waking up in hospital after treatment for a Trifid sting. Upon removing the bandages covering his eyes, he realises that he has had a very lucky escape. Most of the rest of the world has gone blind due to flashes of light from a meteor shower the previous evening. While the world tries to come to terms ...  Read the complete review

In John Wyndham's 1951 novel 'Day of The Triffids', main protagonist Bill Masen awakes in a London hospital to find that his eyes are heavily bandaged and nobody appears to be around to attend to him. Tentatively removing his bandages and discovering that he is still able to see, Masen quickly discovers that the hospital is deserted and some terrible catastrophe appears to have occured, with the city in a state of abject chaos. Everyone appears to be blind, with some people choosing to drink themselves into oblivion in the numerous pubs throughout the city, whist others cling to one another in an attempt to find food and somehow remain alive. Masen remembers ...  Read the complete review

"What could one do, with the best will in the world, but prolong the anguish? Placate one's conscience for a while again, just to see the result of the effort wasted once more." From the diabolical bio-engineering of the Soviet Union come the seeds of the triffid, a plant that consumes flesh, can grow upward of ten feet, disable opponents with a poisonous whip-like stinger, and uproot themselves from the earth and walk on three stumpy legs. Their seeds were spread worldwide when a plane was shot down in a botched attempt to smuggle them out of Russia, and as the world grows to accept them as part of everyday life, they are farmed in ...  Read the complete review

The day off the Triffids is probably one of the author John Wyndham’s best known books. Written in 1951. The Cold War was clearly preying on Wyndham's mind at the time of writing, and the book mirrors a growing sense of unease felt by many during this time, Where they felt man was on the brink of wiping himself off the face of the earth, either through war or industrial accident and that we were delving in to scientific areas of research we knew very little about. At the time genetic research was in its very early stages and there was a feeling in the populous that we were interfering with something that would ultimately come back and bite us on the bum. Bill Masen ...  Read the complete review

This book has been sat on my bookshelf since I failed to return it to my school when I left some years ago. At long last I’ve got round to reading it, but was it worth the fifteen year wait? The answer is a resounding yes! The plot is now well known, what with a mediocre film staring (for some reason) Howard Keel and a, as fair as I can remember, a reasonable BBC TV series of the early eighties. The plot revolves around the vast majority of the world’s population being struck blind in one swoop by a strange “meteor shower” (or was it some malfunctioning weapon?). The situation allows the, previously farmed and tended for valuable oils, ...  Read the complete review