The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
First published 1951.
A classic title by a classic sci-fi author, The Day of the Triffids is one of those books that I know the premise of - to a degree - but am not entirely sure whether I have read it before. I thought I had, but there was a lot I didn't remember.
To my knowledge, the premise was 'a world where everyone goes blind and killer plants (triffids) roam around preying on the blind humans.' That is true, but a surprisingly large amount of the runtime doesn't focus on the titular triffids at all - or if it does, they are more in the background. This seems to be largely because Wyndham has resisted the urge to 'over-humanize' the plants; they are not 'plotting' against people, they are simply taking the most of the opportunity presented by the blinding of humanity in order to do what they do best. Although they are shown to 'communicate' to some degree and gather where humans have survived, even this is more about responding to the noises that humanity produce than an aggressive agenda - although there is room for doubt in all this theorising.
The focus on the book is instead on mankind's ability to destroy mankind. The triffids (it is strongly hinted) are the result of genetic modification (or whatever passed for that in the early 1950s); the blinding of humanity seems to have resulted from a freak meteor shower but may actually have been the result of a weaponized satellite releasing radioactivity into the atmosphere; even a plague that strikes humanity after the blinding event is suggested to have its origins in human experimentation. And a large number of the survivors are shown to make matters worse by their choices - Wyndham (as I noted in The Chrysalids) seems to particularly focus on making those with traditional religious views into the idiotic villains of the piece, and suggesting that humanity would to better to resort to ideas such as polygamy in order to survive.
In all of this the storyline is somewhat incidental. Our narrator, Bill, is an 'everyman' hero, only unique in his knowledge of, and suspicion of, triffids. He has been saved from blindness by an accident at a triffid farm, and mostly just wanders from scenario to scenario as a way for the audience to see how this new world is turning out - or collapsing, as the case may be. Bill quickly befriends a future love interest, Josella, and their subsequent separation is the only drive for the remainder of the book, as Bill seeks to reunite with her.
As with other Wyndham books, the story doesn't truly 'resolve' in any way; rather, the ending simply points out what this new world looks like and leaves our main characters surviving within it.
It's an interesting way of doing things, but in this instance, Wyndham leaned too far into the cynical for too long for me to recommend the book as a whole.
Completed 16 March 2024.
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