There were readings of the novel in 1953 ( BBC Home Service – 15 × 15 minutes, read by Frank Duncan) Meikle, Denis (2008). A History of Horrors: The Rise and Fall of the House of Hammer (reviseded.). Scarecrow Press. p. 49. ISBN 9780810863811. Like many Wyndham novels, there is a true female lead, and Bill soon encounters her when he comes across a blind man who is bullying a sighted woman to lead him around. Josella is rescued by Bill and their adventures then begin. The polygamy implicit in Beadley's scheme for rebuilding society appalls some group members, especially the religious Miss Durrant. However, before these plans can be put in place, a man named Wilfred Coker stages a fire at the university and kidnaps a number of sighted individuals, including Bill and Josella. They are each chained to a blind person and assigned to lead a squadron of the blind, collecting food and other supplies, all the while beset by escaped triffids and rival scavengers.

Stripping off his bandages, Bill wanders the halls of the hospital, discovering scenes he compares to Doré's pictures of sinners in hell, with patients massed in the lobby, sobbing or moaning, none of them with the sight to find the exit. Running into a pub across the street, Bill finds two blind men. One of them reveals that his wife and boys were blinded by the "bloody comets" along with everyone else in London. The man bowed out of participating with his wife in suicide by gas fumes and is in search of something stronger than gin to drink to summon the courage to join them. In retrospect, the focus seems more about exploring the breakdown of society and how people chose to re-construct in the aftermath, and not about the characters or plot. Granted, that's frequently a staple of the genre, but here emotional engagement was limited, so it didn't reach its potential. Although, perhaps that was a good thing, as too much focus on Josella might have caused eyestrain. The 2012 short story "How to Make a Triffid" by Kelly Lagor includes discussions of the possible genetic pathways that could be manipulated to engineer the triffids. [20] Themes [ edit ] Science and technology [ edit ] There is a certain sense of realism within this with its feudal societies and distinct personalities that establish ideas of how man would actually behave in such an apocalypse. And I think this idea has been copied (or at least mirrored) by consequential works that clearly have drawn inspiration from this story. I see a lot of this book in survival horrors such as The Road, The Death of Grass and even in The Walking Dead. It clearly is an important piece of writing that has been crucial in helping establish a genre. Yeates, Robert (2016). "Gender and Ethnicity in Post-Apocalyptic Suburbia". Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. 27 (3 (97)): 411–434. ISSN 0897-0521. JSTOR 26321146.Evil plants called triffids, which suddenly appeared around the world a few years before, swiftly takes advantage of the hopeless confusion and prey upon the population.

A six-episode (each episode 30 minutes in length) television serial version was produced by the BBC in 1981 and repeated first on UKGold in the early 1990s (as 3x50 minute episodes, as it was edited for international sales) then on BBC Four in 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2014. It starred John Duttine as Bill Masen and was fairly faithful to the novel, albeit moving the timeline to a then-contemporary setting, with Triffid oil being farmed as an energy-saving fuel additive. Brian Aldiss coined the disparaging phrase cosy catastrophe to describe the subgenre of post-war apocalyptic fiction in which society is destroyed save for a handful of survivors, who are able to enjoy a relatively comfortable existence. [15] He singled out The Day of the Triffids as an example and described Triffids as "totally devoid of ideas". [16] However, some more recent critics have argued against this view. Margaret Atwood wrote: "one might as well call World War II—of which Wyndham was a veteran—a 'cozy' war because not everyone died in it". [17] Binns, Amy (October 2019). HIDDEN WYNDHAM: life, love, letters. GRACE JUDSON PRESS. ISBN 9780992756710. When no-one is forthcoming he eventually unwraps his bandages to find his sight is fine, but the hospital is in chaos. Realising something is amiss, Bill discharges himself and wanders the streets of London, where he realises that the meteor shower has permanently blinded almost all the population.I myself had not been one of those addicted to living in an apartment with a rent of some two thousand pounds a year, but I found that there were decidedly things to be said in favor of it. The interior decorators had been, I guessed, elegant young men with just that ingenious gift for combining taste with advanced topicality which is so expensive. Consciousness of fashion was the mainspring of the place. Here and there were certain unmistakable derniers cris, some of them undoubtedly destined --had the world pursued its expected course--to become the rage of tomorrow; others, I would say, a dead loss from their very inception. It’s a shame the BBC are too uptight, and snobby to make proper science fiction and horror programmes, and they are way behind with the current crop of top sci fi shows coming from the US. Next film adaptation (hopefully one is in the works) should have a cameo by Stevie Wonder whose lyrics would be perceived as incredibly prophetic: