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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. |
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