Yes, I know this is over 50 years old. Someone recently mentioned it and it had been a long time since I read it, so I checked it out from the library. This copy has an interesting introduction penned for the fiftieth anniversary, evaluating it in the context of 9-11.

Wyndham is, I think, underrated, like a number of British authors (e.g., James Blish). Now you might think that anyone writing about the doom of mankind at the hand, er, tendril, of homicidal plants is justly underrated, but Wyndham sets it up expertly and credibly. The writing is spare and immediate: he does not waste time explaining the source of the meteor shower or how the triffids originated in Russia. He just gets right to the good stuff.

I think that the book is underappreciated because it is so veddy English - even though prim and proper English society had been dealt a massive attitude readjustment by WWII, by 1951 it still remained on a different social planet from the USA. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Mrs. Grundy character who responds to an announcement by a Prof. de la Paz-type character that the surviving men will have to take multiple wives and the women make babies, with the frosty retort, "Is the speaker advocating Free Love?" And yet - and yet - Wyndham then goes on to make an impassioned pragmatic defense of the prof's argument, through no less a character than a young attractive female, who was not only quite capable but had recently penned a book titled, "Sex is My Adventure"! Hence my review of this book here - this section is positively Heinleinian. Given the publication date, it's debatable who influenced whom, if at all, of course.

It now reads as somewhat dated, not just for the slightly complex phrasing but also the attitudes of yesteryear - survivors feeling guilty at taking items from abandoned stores without paying for them seems regrettably quaint now. But for anyone who hasn't read this book, if you never thought that walking plants could be a terrifying adversary, check it out.

James Blish is an American author.

Wyndham also wrote under his birth name (or versions of it); he's got a triple-barrelled combination of names, but the only ones I can remember are "Benyon" and his last name "Harris." ISTR Day of the Triffids was the first written under the John Wyndham pseudonym

I've read half a dozen of his novels; Re-birth is my favorite. The Kraken Wakes/Out of the Deep has an oddly "thirties" feel to it.

I don't really know how neglected Harris is -- he's got four "classics" under his belt and has had numerous screen and radio adaptations. The Midwich Cuckoos gets adapted periodically, and I think BBC did a TV version of Chocky some time back. He's more current than most 50's-60's writers.

Any more of this and the thread should be split, but just for the benefit of any one reading this thread wondering, "Who is this Blish guy?", I don't want them to go away thinking that he was some transplanted hack who just wrote bad Trek novelizations.

To equalize the record, let me cite some of my favorite Blish books: The Cities in Flight tetralogy (They Shall Have Stars, A Life for the Stars, Earthman Come Home, A Clash of Cymbals); All The Stars a Stage; and a book I love very much, Jack of Eagles, which seems to get no attention whatsoever.

Yes, he wrote many other books, some more famous ones, but those are my favorites. Cities in Flight is a series I reread every few years like Stranger and the Foundation trilogy. Time to pick it up again, I think.

Somehow I just cannot picture you as a guilty pleasure kind of guy, Bill....

Books that are guilty pleasures - when does it cross the line into pure trash and maybe trash with something to recommend it?

When there is something you SHOULD read (for work or whatever, may even be interesting but not as much FUN as the good stuff) something you would LOVE to read, and something that is at least words in a row, where do you draw the line? Or at least what do you feel guilty about reading? What makes a book the literary equivalent of a doughnut?

A graduate student I teach told me the other day that she "looked at the paper but did not read it". How can anyone do that? Can you look at text in a language you are fluent in and NOT read it???

Are we really that weird around here or am I the only one?

Rambling posts like this - another guilty pleasure- sorry Jim.

Audrey

I read Day of the Triffid years ago...I remember lending the book to one of the teachers who oversaw my student teaching (yep, that long ago) and never getting it back. I listened to it recently on an audio book and enjoyed it just as much. It is a book that holds up well.

And if you've ever listened to a bunch of 16--19 year old boys (with the 13 year old chiming in from time to time) analyze the characters, plot, and symbols of a video game, comparing it to others, and speaking knowledgeably about the writers, animators and voice actors, you'll know those papers will not be long in coming.

Hey, I remember having to fight to take a class in science fiction way back in the 70s. (taught by Phillip Klass who wrote under the name William Tenn and whose work I liked before I got to Penn State--and there's an unappreciated sf writer for you--he only taught the class every few years and I was taking it no matter who I had to fight to do it. Got it in as an American Lit credit--don't ask). Video games just may be the new ghetto.