September 2011 Guest Editor David Almond:"I read this time and time again. It led me on to Wyndham’s other fine works, like The Midwich Cuckoos and The Chrysalids, the first time I really began to explore an author’s whole oeuvre. It’s a great disaster book, a love story, a book about the dangers of messing with the natural world, about human vulnerability, human greed, and the fragililty of our civilisation. It’s tightly written and beautifully plotted. And the triffids themselves, rattling gently in the darkness before they strike, are genuinely terrifying."
Graham Marks, August 2010 Guest Editor, also chose this chilling classic: "John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos were two of the scariest books I’d ever read. When I came across them it was the first time I realised that while some books were great stories, there were others that were also ‘Big Idea’ books - what would nowadays be called High Concept, like Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. When I started writing, in the back of my mind there was always the thought that I always had to try and deliver more. There still is."
When a freak cosmic event renders most of the Earth's population blind, Bill Masen is one of the lucky few to retain his sight. The London he walks is crammed with groups of men and women needing help, some ready to prey on those who can still see. But another menace stalks blind and sighted alike. With nobody to stop their spread the Triffids, mobile plants with lethal stingers and carnivorous appetites, seem set to take control. The Day of the Triffids is perhaps the most famous catastrophe novel of the twentieth century and its startling imagery of desolate streets and lurching, lethal plant life retains its power to haunt today.
John Wyndham was the son of a barrister. After trying a number of careers, including farming, law, commercial art and advertising, he started writing short stories in 1925. After serving in the civil Service and the Army during the war, he went back to writing. Adopting the name John Wyndham, he started writing a form of science fiction that he called 'logical fantasy’. As well as The Day of the Triffids, he wrote The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned) and The Seeds of Time.
