The Day of the Triffids

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The Day of the Triffids is a post-apocalyptic 1951 novel by the English science fiction author John Wyndham. The novel is written in the first-person, and describes in elegant detail what happens after civilisation collapses. It was later made into a radio series, a motion picture, and a television serial. Image:Triffid.png

1 Plot
2 Adaptations
3 In popular culture
4 External links

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Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Triffids are very strange fictional plants, capable of rudimentary animal-like behaviour: they are able to uproot themselves and walk, possess a deadly whip-like poisonous sting, and may even have the ability to communicate with each other. Wyndham capably describes the triffid by breaking its appearance down into several more familiar elements: in fact he later suggests that the plant might be concocted of various different plants.

In the story, the narrator speculates on the plants' origins. He dismisses claims that they evolved naturally, or arrived from space, or were sent as punishment from a deity. Instead, it is suggested that they were bioengineered when he was a child, possibly in the Soviet Union by the real-life Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko (this detail is left ambiguous). Fear of the Soviet Union is a pervading theme of the novel, and Wyndham was writing at a time when the complete failure of Lysenkoism was unknown in capitalist countries.

The triffid quickly became established as a major crop due to its invaluable edible oils and proteins. After an aeroplane accident, seeds reach the West and the plants become commonplace. Many households keep them as a curiosity, almost a garden pet, making sure to have the sting docked at regular intervals. In commercial exploitation, the stings are left intact as docking impairs the quality of the plant oil.

The story proper opens with the narrator Bill Masen in hospital, with his eyes bandaged after having been stung by a triffid. He discovers that while he has been blindfolded, an unusual meteor shower has blinded most people on Earth (the sharp-eyed will notice close parallels in more recent apocalyptic sci-fi). Bill later muses that the shower may have been some sort of space-based weapons system which misfired, though the true cause is never revealed (this intriguing technique of withholding ostensibly-critical background to the plot is a key Wyndham characteristic also present in that author's The Midwich Cuckoos and The Kraken Wakes). The protagonist finds people in London struggling to stay alive in the face of their new, instantly-acquired affliction, some cooperating, some fighting: after just a few days society is collapsing.

Meanwhile, in a "double-whammy" situation characteristic of the Wyndham style, triffids are quickly regrowing their stings and eager to take full Darwinian advantage of the new "edge" over humankind that chance events have given them. Undocked specimens in captivity break free. The handful of sighted survivors escape the general collapse, to be faced by the growing numbers of free, undocked triffids, which grow bolder and more aggressive every day. They are also forced into some far-from-cosy realisations about just how many of his/her blinded fellow men and women each remaining sighted person can possibly help, without being exploited into an early grave.

Masen meets Josella Playton, a woman who also avoided being blinded, and the two manage to survive the perils of London and fall in love. Though they are separated, Bill and a sighted girl he has adopted eventually find Josella living with friends on a remote country estate, and the pair become an established couple. When a para-military organisation comes to take over their resources and want to split up the household, they escape with their son to join others in a community on the Isle of Wight. The entire second half of the book has much to say about just how impossibly difficult re-establishing the civilisation we have become used to (following a blow of whatever kind) might prove to be. Indeed, the novel ends with the triffids still dominant and a few human survivors grimly attempting to fight back.

Image:Dayofthetriffids1981.jpg Image:RadioTimesTriffids1981.jpg

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Adaptations

The novel was adapted into a BBC radio series in 1957.

A film version of this story was produced in the UK and released in 1962. It was directed by Steve Sekely, and Howard Keel played the role of the book's narrator, Bill Masen. The movie was filmed in color with monaural sound and ran for 93 minutes.

Although the film retained some basic plot elements, it was not a particularly faithful adaptation. Here, the Triffids arrive as spores in an earlier meteor shower, and some of the action is moved to Spain. Most seriously, it supplies a simplistic solution to the triffid problem: salt water dissolves them.

It was turned into a BBC television serial in 1981. This was a much more faithful adaptation, and is generally regarded as the best. The adaptation starred John Duttine (as Bill Masen), Emma Relph (as Josella Payton) and Maurice Colbourne (as Jack Coker).

In 2001, British novelist Simon Clark wrote a sequel titled The Night of The Triffids.

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