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The Long and Wyndham Road
Sue looks at John Wyndham's recent centenary, and finds that thanks
in no small part to the additional medium of television and film,
the Triffids at least still haunt us.
Thanks in no small part to the additional medium of television and film, the Triffids, at least still haunt us. Every time Alan Titchmarsh encounters a wild garden before its dramatic makeover, the word ‘Triffid’ to conjure up a deadly invasive plant, hovers unspoken in all our minds.
Following the chance discovery of a sad-looking paperback of 'The Chrysalids' this summer, I found that John Wyndham was born on July 10th 1903 and I had recently missed his centenary. Not only that he was a Midlander, born in Knowle and living for his first 11 years in Edgbaston, making him an almost Brummie like me. Further digging revealed that although there were three paperback versions available of 'The Day Of The Triffids' available on the Penguin website, of the anniversary there was no mention. Finally, I found out that it had been marked, albeit in a small way, by his friends and fans at the closest pub to the old White Horse, Norwich Road, London once one of his drinking haunts. Brian Aldiss and joined a select band of fans to swap stories and remembrances. Arthur C Clarke sent a video message. Proof as if it were needed that Wyndham is still well regarded by those in the business. What of the stories then that sparked off this treasure hunt? 'The Chrysalids' is about developing super-humans that leaves the doomed ordinary human behind. It is a tight claustrophobic tale of a group who turn out to be different from their families because they can communicate by thought. In a world that will tolerate no deviation from the norm they are doomed until they discover that they are not alone. Taken from the point of view of the super-humans, this novel demonstrates only one side of the coin. Wyndham showed the flip side of this in 'The Midwich Cuckoos' portraying the superhuman alien children that will destroy the human race if they are allowed to live. In this scenario, the superhuman is condemned as humans do all they can to protect themselves. The story of 'The Day of the Triffids' is the most well known with its vision of a blinded population condemned to be attacked by the mobile Triffid plants. This book in particular portrays a scarily plausible post-Apocalyptic scenario that entirely reflects the uncertainly felt in Great Britain after the Second World War. Other books I managed to turn up in a short time were 'Seeds of Time' (1956) and 'Wanderers of Time' (1980) both collections of his short stories produced for various Science Fiction publications before and after the War. Some of the stories may sound to our ear, quaint and middle-class. It is the lost world of Paul Temple and The Saint where a gentleman does the right thing and keeps his upper lip well and truly stiff. The outward appearance is the form of the time he was writing with the content still fresh and relevant today. His novels are narrated in first person but he tends to detach himself in many of his short stories which gives him more scope to finish his main character off! His short stories often deal with fairly grim subjects leavened by his sense of humour. In the novels, the air of detachment and sometimes grim amusement comes through his narrators. Wyndham's most famous novels are recorded as if it all happened in the recent past. They are a matter of history and he is simply recording the 'facts'. His short stories also demonstrate a straightforward no-nonsense style that leaves us reeling at the end. He lulls us into his fictional world until it is too late to pull away - the Triffids are already chasing us down the drive! With so many new menaces to choose from he was able to play on our fears, forcing his narrators into grim new realities. Wyndham enjoyed manipulating the short story and provides plenty of variety in 'The Seeds of Time'. In his introduction, Wyndham states that he and other writers began pushing the boundaries against the shoot-em-up cowboy in space approach in the 1930s thanks to certain editors being open to new ideas. In other unspoken words, the editors and the writers must have been bored by the restrictions of stories to 'the adventures of galactic gangsters in space-opera'. He and his fellow writers stretched Science Fiction into the broad church it is today, with stories reflecting serious concerns in a world 'between wars'. Many of his works deal with the real possibility of the human race managing to annihilate itself. His novels were mostly produced in the 1950s when at the height of the cold war humanity stepped up and peered into the precipice. With regard to his narrators, although they are invariably male or omniscient there is a great deal of input from the female characters, perhaps indicative with how fast things changed in the decades before and after the Second World War. The women move from being merely decorative to being an integral part of the short stories and the novels definitely include women on an equal basis with the men. In several of the stories in 'Seeds of Time', Wyndham acknowledges that women are indeed equal to all men and superior to many. I would cite 'Survival' as a story written by a man in awe of the female and 'Dumb Martian' as written by a man who despises the attitude of those who would discriminate with regard to race or sex. The narrator deciding, with his very intelligent wife, who will tell the tale, prefaces 'The Kraken Awakes' and it is made perfectly plain before it starts who is in charge. David may narrate 'The Chrysalids' but it is Rosalind, his cousin, who makes all the decisions and is the stronger character and it is David's younger sister, Petra, who proves to be the next step on the evolutionary scale. Her mental powers are so important that the group's task is to save her at all costs. It may have been his personal life or experiences during World War Two that make his novels appear to be so business-like and factual. He certainly speaks with authority about how the Government would react to a crisis. Wyndham was in the Civil Service at the start of the War and later the Army, seeing active service in France. Perhaps he was impressed by the women he met taking their place as equals. After all, they underwent a dramatic change in their roles and status even if it was only during the war years. Certainly by the time he wrote his novels, these women had a voice and were also a potential market for his work. It did him no harm that his novels included such forthright and independent women. John Wyndham lived, like we do, in a time of great technological change. He was born in Edwardian times when men wore button-on collars and drove motor cars at twenty miles an hour. He died a couple of months before the first Moon landing on 20th July 1969. It was already a probability with the first Apollo mission one year before. At least, he didn't find out that it was the end rather than the beginning, although to be fair he knew his tales like many before were romantic flights of fancy. By the time he published his short stories in a collection, the public had other things than invaders from space to worry about. In choosing to write short stories in Science Fiction magazines, he acknowledged the public hunger for a good story. It gave him the freedom to explore not strange new worlds but the inner life of human emotions. In his fictional worlds, there are canals, life on Mars, alien invasions and, of course, jealousy, murder, greed, desire ignorance and fear. A big leap from short stories about space was his move to writing novels set in a familiar environment, an England that was contemporary to his original readers. By grounding his novels in the innocuous English countryside he able to increase the scare-factor in them to the power of ten. His novels dealt in the very real possibilities of nuclear war and biological warfare that would affect the man and woman in the street-you and me. Most of the damage he envisions is that done by human beings to each other. As a precursor to 'The Day of the Triffids' he wrote a story called 'The Puffball Menace' in 1933 describing a method of biological infection which is quite as shocking as anything written since and all set in the peaceful English countryside. A short but crucial step from the mustard gas developed and used in the First World War to mass infection of the civilian population. Although a short story, in only 27 pages, it describes a complete Doomsday scenario that he later developed fully in his major novels. This then is the power of Wyndham because while his some of his short stories are mildly amusing his disasters are completely catastrophic. The world of his narrator is completely changed and nothing can ever be the same again. In 'The Day Of The Triffids' the disaster occurs pretty much at the beginning. In 'The Chrysalids' it occurs in the time before the novel commences and in 'The Kraken Awakes' the narrator takes us through from the first fireball to drowning of London. There is no going back in these novels. The narrator states what has happened leaving the reader to make of it what he will. The biggest what-if in Science Fiction is the what-if it could really happen? Time has not dimmed the appetite for this kind of speculative fiction. John Wyndham's books are still in print several years after his death with some even on curriculums around the world. They also continue to attract the attention of the medium that was just beginning when he was born. To feed the public appetite for being scared out of their wits, some of his stories were picked up and made into films. 'The Day Of The Triffids' and 'The Midwich Cuckoos' both filmed in the early 1960s were perfect crowd-pleasers having an identifiable menace. Although Triffids is not highly rated, 'The Midwich Cuckoos' filmed as 'Village Of The Damned' has endured. It is notable for the performance of the incomparable George Sanders as the man who takes on the responsibility of protecting the world from the 'cuckoos'. It is also a British SF film that relies less on special effects and more on dramatic tension to build up suspense and horror. The 1981 BBC version of 'The Day Of The Triffids' was a great success. As a co-production with the Australian Broadcasting corporation, it was able to garner more budget for its special effects but it wisely kept the Triffid as a menace that only occasionally was allowed screen-time thus preserving its shock factor. 'Chocky' was made into a children's television series in the 1980s with sequels penned by scriptwriters when it proved to be a success. Wyndham's short stories have also been filmed for TV and cinema-in particular 'Random Quest' (filmed in 1971 as 'Quest for Love'). It starred a youthful Joan Collins and addressed the question of parallel universes. That is one I would like to see! As it stands, only the 1962 version of ' The Day Of The Triffids' is available on video and DVD with the 1981 version mired in copyright problems. The BFI recently included it in a special season of SF and it has been aired on UK Gold for those with satellite TV. The original 'Village of the Damned' is not available on either video or DVD but hopefully that too is only a matter of time. While we wait perhaps it is time to pull the dusty orange penguins off the shelves and enjoy again the various worlds of John Wyndham. I have tried to provide a short overview here and hope to encourage young readers to try him out and maybe older ones to wallow in the nostalgia I felt when I read 'The Seeds of Time' this week and realised I had first read it as a teenager. All the stories I read had been written long before I was born. As a child of the 60s, I have seen the possible worlds contract as we seek more knowledge-no canals on Mars I' m afraid. The dangers and concerns of the 1950s are not so easily dismissed which is why these books can still chill the bones. A self-professed fan of the great HG Wells, Wyndham shared the vision of catastrophe and its aftermath. He wrote about new breeds of humans, biological warfare, GM crops, interstellar travel, time travel and dimensional travel. He has supplied enduring and endearing ideas to those who fill our screens with escapism and romance. He has the ability to make you laugh but his real power lies in his ability to overturn the cosy world we know turning it into a dark and dangerous place. Not a comprehensive list of his published works:-
Some of these are available from Penguin. Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos available as downloads from www.rosettabooks.com Other resources:- http://www.livejournal.com/users/lproven/27224.html Details of the birthday celebrations The John Wyndham archive page maintained by Andy Sawyer at the University of Liverpool Library. http://www.liv.ac.uk/~asawyer/wyndham.html The website for the Archive of John Wyndham's work. It seems that there are several works in the pipeline not least of which a long overdue critical biography. Bristol Community Development Group will be featuring 'The Day Of The Triffids' as their 'Big Read' event next year. Plans are still being drawn up, but a weekend event early next year involving talks by prominent authors and JW scholars, and film showing looks on the cards. Sue Davies (c) Sue Davies 2003
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OTHER CONTENT - September 2003
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What
does the name John Wyndham call to mind to you, the avid Science
Fiction reader and viewer? When asking a twenty-something librarian
for a copy of 'The Day Of The Triffids' that had de-materialised
she had no idea who or what I was talking about but happily I don't
think she is typical. 
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