Pages : 272
Overall Mark : 8/10
When Bill Masen wakes up in his hospital bed, he finds a population rendered blind and helpless by the spectacular meteor shower that filled the night sky the evening before – a newly-blinded population now at the mercy of the Triffids. Once, the Triffids were farmed for their oil, their uncanny ability to move and their carnivorous habits well controlled by their human keepers. But now, with humans so vulnerable, they are a potent threat to humanity’s very survival...
JOHN WYNDHAM (1903-1969)
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris started writing short stories in 1925. He wrote under many pen names, eventually settling on John Wyndham for his modified form of science fiction, which he called ‘logical fantasy’. He is best-known as the author of The Day of the Triffids, but he wrote many other successful novels including The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids and The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned).
VERDICT
This was definitely not what I was expecting. Far from the monster movie feel I thought this was going to have, it is much more similar in theme to modern books like The Road (except this was enjoyable). The fact that the blindness that inflicts the population of the world may have been caused by man rather than an alien race, and that the Triffids themselves were already living among mankind and took the blindness as a cue to attack, makes it a much more effective read.
