John Wyndham

[DavidXBrunt]

Thanks to the prolific film, television and particularly radio adaptations I've long been familiar with the work of John Wyndham without reading so much as a single page of his novels. Last Autumn I found a copy of Day of the Triffids in a jumble sale and for 10p decided it was worth a punt. What I found was something ideally suited to me as a reader.

I've always been drawn to what you can loosely term 'Apocalypse-lit' and always enjoyed that very British approach of the ordinary man muddling through rather than an all round Ace saving the day. The sly humour of the piece appealed to me greatly and the attention to social and character details, the loose ends, the pace and willingness to pause for chat and debate were also greatly appreciated by this particular reader.

I'm a fairly prodigious reader, tallying an averag 10 a month and to prevent me from falling into set habits of only reading the same sort of thing I pick a topic or theme every four months and add books from it to the reading list, usually reading a book from that area a month for a year. Recently I've added books published by Virago and Australian novelists to the list and was looking for another to add to the mix. The B.B.C. Clasic Audio Sci-Fi range included 3 Wyndham stories in the latest release batch and having listened to them I've decided to work my way through Wyndams ouvre. The local library has a stack of his novels in the basement and there's plenty in print. I've started this topic for a general discussion of Wyndham, his works, and where to go next in my reading.

Specifically I've just finished Web which is a failry high brow pulp story, reading like a very British, very educated B-Movie. Intelligent spiders, a small band of plucky Brits, an isolated location, even a justification for getting the heroine down to her scanties make it perfect for a cheap B-movie adaptation. What saves it from being so much James Herbert is the ongoing debate on the origin of the spiders, and the lead characters analytical reaction to them.

Charmingly three possible reasons for the spiders sudden ability to co-operate and there's no-one with a definitively right answer. One of them is quaintly naive and relys on a belief in black magic, another makes the 'sophisticated' belief in atomic mutation look like being just as naive and the third, evolution, is the most pressing. But importantly the lead character, plausably, has no way of really knowing.

There's a debate throughout on the 'Balance of Nature' and mankinds position of dominance in the food chain that allows the narrator and the other survivor of the doomed expedition to the little sisters island to express intelligent, well reasoned arguements which, for me, made gripping reading. It's also hard to deny that mankinds grip on power is shakier than is comfortable to believe.

Anyway, it was an entertaining mix of hokey old nonsense used as a springboard for debate and kept me turning pages til the slight pagecount was done.

Next up Jizzle and The Trouble with Lichen...but then where? Thoughts, comments, criticism and critiques wanted and more than welcome.

[ming]

The Kraken Wakes is also good - a bit like a wet Day of the Triffids.  The Chrysalids is also excellent.  Must dig these out again.  Like re-reading War of the Worlds, always a pleasure, never a chore!

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Mrs X just finished the Chrsyalids last Saturday. His best book by far.

Also, you could re-live your creepy childhood with Chocky.

[Dudley]

Novels:

The Day of the Triffids (1951)
The Kraken Wakes (1953)
Planet Plane (1953)
The Chrysalids (1955)
The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
Trouble with Lichen (1960)
The Outward Urge (1961) (writing as Lucas Parkes)
Chocky (1968)
Web (1979)

Of these, I've not read Web but have just ordered it based on your recommendation, and I've never heard of Planet Plane.

Every single other book on that list is among the best science fiction stories I've ever read.  The Trouble With Lichen is excellent (though its version of feminism is slightly period piece), and I reread The Midwich Cuckoos and The Kraken Wakes every couple of years.

[El Spurioso]

Haven't read it, but he also wrote "The Seeds of Time", which is supposed to be pretty good.

[Dudley]

I've not read most of his short story collections, but they are:

Jizzle (1954)
The Seeds of Time (1956)
Tales of Gooseflesh and Laughter (1956)
Consider Her Ways and Others (1961)
The Infinite Moment (1961)
Sleepers of Mars (1973)
The Best of John Wyndham (1973)
Wanderers of Time (1973)
Exiles on Asperus (1979)
No Place like Earth (2003)

(Thanks, Wikipedia!)

[El Spurioso]

"Jizzle" is the best word I have EVER heard.

[Dudley]

Better than "arsegike"?

[Byron Virgo]

"Jizzle fo' shizzle, ma nizzle!"

[DavidXBrunt]

Oh, if you like Midwich Cuckoos I can't recommend the recently released Beeb radio adaptaion of it enough. Stunning piece of drama, gripped me to the very end. I listened to part one with the intention of stopping there. I couldn't.

Jizzle, by the way is a monkey who tricks it's owners into thinking their wives have been unfaithfull.

[Byron Virgo]

That may be the greatest story idea I've ever heard of - I'm off to the Book & Comic exchange in Notting Hill to see if I can grab a copy!

[DavidXBrunt]

Oh, have I told you how the monkey does this? Through the medium of pornographic sketches.

[duaneduke]

I've been a fan of Wyndham's for quite some time after reading 'Triffids' a few years back.

Interesting bit I noticed from the wikipedia site:

John Wyndham (July 10, 1903 â?? March 11, 1969) was the pen name used by the often post-apocalyptic British science fiction writer John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris.

In his earlier writings, Wyndham used various combinations of his names, such as John Beynon or Lucas Parkes.

One of the new Abaddon authors is called Mark Beynon. Wonder if he's a relation? It is an unusual surname.

[pauljholden]

I remember reading Chrysalids years and years ago (I may have been 13 or so) and being really moved by it. I'd quiet like to read it again.

-pj

[Dark Jimbo]

As one of the board's biggest Wyndham fans (I immodestly imagine myself to be) I feel I have to spread the word about some of his lesser-known classics - specifically meaning, I've yet to find another human being who's read them (anyone...?).

Everyone knows Chrysalids, Cuckoos, etc, so I won't bother gushing about those, but his first full-length novels written under his pseudonyms (see somewhere above) for the American market are really worth finding, if you can. They've only been printed twice, as far as I know - in the 1930s, then again in the 1970s, so they'll be pretty hard to get hold of.

The Secret People
His first novel, I think. The Sahara Desert is about to be flooded to make a new ocean, and a daredevil pilot makes a last trip over it before the imminent flooding. Of course he crashes, waking up beneath the desert in a subterranean world of giant mushrooms, luminous lichens and a (secret) race of squat half-humans who live underground. Turns out this race has been taking people prisoner for centuries, and the pilot finds himself a slave along with many other ragged misfits who went missing from the 'overworld' many years ago. There are even sub-species of humans, albino men and women who've been born underground and never seen daylight. The book involves his struggle to encourage the other prisoners to rebel and overcome their captors, and all before the underground world of caverns is flooded forever...

Stowaway to Mars
I bloody love this one, and wish I still had my copy. Up there with Triffids and Chrsyalids. Basically concerns Man's first flight to Mars, but the lovely thing is that it's a race between the British and the Russians, the two big space powers in this reality (the yanks coming a very poor third). The Brits get there first (yay!), discovering along the way that they've got a stowaway (a woman, for the sake of balance) but there's a problem - Mars is already inhabited.

Most of the Martians themselves are centuries-dead, but as they died out they built various races of odd mechanical creatures to maitain them in their cryogenic chambers, and later provide hosts for their spirits. The book concerns the Brit's tangles with these robots and Martians, who intend to wake up and go and claim the earth for their own, all complicated no end when the Russians turn up too.

There's a sequel to this one, too, equally as good, but I can't for the life of me remember the name. Sleepers of Mars? Return to Mars?
Worth reading anyway, simply because Wyndham was generally very averse to writing sequels.

There was at least one more significant early book, but my memory is struggling to remember much else now, so I'll leave it at that. I've somehow managed to completely overlook Web, so I'm off to find a copy.