John Wyndham

David Storm's father doesn't approve of Angus Morton's unusually large horses, calling them blasphemies against nature. Little does he realise that his own son, and his cousin Rosalind and their friends, have their own secret abberaion which would label them as mutants. But as David and Rosalind grow older it becomes more difficult to conceal their differences from the village elders. Soon they face a choice: wait for eventual discovery, or flee to the terrifying and mutable Badlands . . . The Chrysalids is a post-nuclear apocalypse story of genetic mutation in a devastated world and explores the lengths the intolerant will go to to keep themselves pure.

The Chrysalids

The Midwich Cuckoos

The classic science fiction horror novel of possessed children that inspired the terrifying Village of the Damned films. In John Wyndam’s classically elegant, calm style, this novel explores the arrival of a collective intelligence on earth that threatens to eliminate mankind. The quiet, eerie changes that befall Midwich manifest in strange ways: On the surface, everything seems normal, but scratch a little deeper and there is a clear sense of dread. After the night of September 26, every woman of childbearing age is pregnant, all to give birth at the same time, to children who are all alike—their eyes mesmerizing, void of emotion. These children are innately possessed with unimaginable mental powers and a formidable intelligence. It is these children who develop into an unstoppable force, capable of anything and far out-reaching other humans in cunning. Whatever dwells in Midwich is sowing the seeds for a master race of ruthless and inhumane creatures who are bent on nothing less than absolute and total domination. The London Evening Standard called The Midwich Cuckoos “humane and urbane with a lightly sophisticated wit putting the ideas into shape.” Wyndham skillfully heightens the terror by making his narrative so rational and matter-of-fact. In such a nuclear and technological age, this story is rich in irony in that it is set in the picturesque, bucolic English Village and the “enemy,” or, the threat is seeming cherubim. “Exciting, unsettling and technically brilliant.” —The Spectator

When a freak cosmic event renders most of the Earth's population blind, Bill Masen is one of the lucky few to retain his sight. The London he walk is crammed with groups of men and women needing help, some ready to prey on those who can still see. But another menace stalks blind and sighted alike. With nobody to stop their spread, the Triffids - mobile plants with lethal stingers and carnivorous appetites - seem set to wipe out the survivors. The Day Of The Triffids is perhaps the most famous catastrophe novel of the twentieth century and its startling imagery of desolate streets and lurching, lethal plant life retains its power to haunt today. 'Has captivated readers for half a century' - Guardian

The Day of the Triffids

Matthew, they thought, was just going through a phase of talking to himself. And, like many parents, they waited for him to get over it, but it started to get worse. Then Matthew started doing things he couldn't do before, like counting in binary-code mathematics. So he told them about Chocky - the person who lived in his head.

Chocky

The influential masterpiece of one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant—and neglected—science fiction and horror writers, whom Stephen King called “the best writer of science fiction that England has ever produced.” What if a meteor shower left most of the world blind—and humanity at the mercy of mysterious and carnivorous plants? Bill Masen undergoes eye surgery and misses the most spectacular meteorite shower England has ever seen. Removing his bandages the next morning, he finds masses of sightless people wandering the city. He soon meets Josella, another lucky person who has retained her sight, and together they leave the city, aware that the safe, familiar world they knew a mere twenty-four hours before is gone forever. But to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, one must survive the strange plants known as Triffids. The Triffids can grow to over seven feet tall, pull their roots from the ground to walk, and kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers. With society in shambles, they are now poised to prey on humankind. Wyndham chillingly anticipates bio-warfare and mass destruction, fifty years before their realization, in this prescient account of Cold War paranoia.

Francis Saxover and Diana Brackley, two scientists investigating a rare lichen, discover it has a remarkable property: it retards the aging process. Francis, realising the implications for the world of an ever-youthful, wealthy elite, wants to keep it secret, but Diana sees an opportunity to overturn the male status quo by using the lichen to inspire a feminist revolution. As each scientist wrestles with the implications and practicalities of exploiting the discovery, the world comes ever closer to learning the truth . . . Trouble With Lichen is a scintillating story of the power wielded by science in our lives and asks how much trust should we place in those we appoint to be its guardians?

Trouble with Lichen

It started with fireballs raining down from the sky and crashing into the oceans’ deeps. Then ships began sinking mysteriously and later ‘sea tanks’ emerged from the deeps to claim people . . . For journalists Mike and Phyllis Watson, what at first appears to be a curiosity becomes a global calamity. Helpless, they watch as humanity struggles to survive now that water – one of the compounds upon which life depends – is turned against them. Finally, sea levels begin their inexorable rise . . . The Kraken Wakes is a brilliant novel of how humankind responds to the threat of its own extinction and, ultimately, asks what we are prepared to do in order to survive.

The Kraken Wakes

An “ingenious, horrifying” (The Guardian) first contact story by one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant—and neglected—science fiction and horror writers, whom Stephen King called “the best writer of science fiction that England has ever produced.” What if aliens colonized Earth's oceans, rather than its land? Britain, 1953: It begins with red dots appearing across the sky and crashing into the oceans’ deeps. Ships begin sinking mysteriously. Then an envoy sent by submarine to establish peaceful communications is killed. Mike and Phyllis Watson are a husband-and-wife journalist team who initially believe that the aliens' interest in the ocean’s floor, a high-pressure environment that is uninhabitable by humankind, means that the two species may peacefully co-exist. But as “sea tanks” emerge from the sea and begin raiding coastal towns—and as the polar ice caps are intentionally melted, raising sea levels everywhere—it becomes clear that these aliens are not interested in sharing, and that humankind might just be on the brink of extinction.

The Chrysalids is set in the future after a devastating global nuclear war. David, the young hero of the novel, lives in a tight-knit community of religious and genetic fundamentalists, who exist in a state of constant alert for any deviation from what they perceive as the norm of God’s creation, deviations broadly classified as “offenses” and “blasphemies.” Offenses consist of plants and animals that are in any way unusual, and these are publicly burned to the accompaniment of the singing of hymns. Blasphemies are human beings—ones who show any sign of abnormality, however trivial. They are banished from human society, cast out to live in the wild country where, as the authorities say, nothing is reliable and the devil does his work. David grows up surrounded by admonitions: KEEP PURE THE STOCK OF THE LORD; WATCH THOU FOR THE MUTANT. At first he hardly questions them, though he is shocked when his sternly pious father and rigidly compliant mother force his aunt to forsake her baby. It is a while before he realizes that he too is out of the ordinary, in possession of a power that could doom him to death or introduce him to a new, hitherto-unimagined world of freedom. The Chrysalids is a perfectly conceived and constructed work from the classic era of science fiction. It is a Voltairean philosophical tale that has as much resonance in our own day, when genetic and religious fundamentalism are both on the march, as when it was written during the Cold War.

The island of Tanakuatua seems like heaven to the 40 people who go there in order to create a utopian society, but soon they start to die in a horrible way and it seems that something strange and deadly is out there in the jungle.

Stowaway to Mars

John Beynon

The Secret People

The influential masterpiece of one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant—and neglected—science fiction and horror writers, whom Stephen King called “the best writer of science fiction that England has ever produced.” “[Wyndham] avoids easy allegories and instead questions the relative values of the civilisation that has been lost, the literally blind terror of humanity in the face of dominant nature. . . . Frightening and powerful, Wyndham’s vision remains an important allegory and a gripping story.”—The Guardian What if a meteor shower left most of the world blind—and humanity at the mercy of mysterious carnivorous plants? Bill Masen undergoes eye surgery and awakes the next morning in his hospital bed to find civilization collapsing. Wandering the city, he quickly realizes that surviving in this strange new world requires evading strangers and the seven-foot-tall plants known as triffids—plants that can walk and can kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers.

Krizalitler

Published to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the author’s death, Plan for Chaos presents a new work from this canonical author, whose previous novels – particularly The Day of the Triffids (in print continuously since 1951) and The Midwich Cuckoos – continue to sell widely through mass-market publishing houses. Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, this never-before-published novel was written simultaneously with The Day of the Triffids, making it a fascinating companion to the author’s most famous work. Wyndham continues to have a significant influence on the direction of SF writing: Ray Bradbury and Margaret Atwood are his most famous acolytes but others such as Kim Stanley Robinson and even Aldous Huxley have drawn heavily on Wyndham’s work. Wyndham himself is considered the direct successor to another canonical writer, H.G. Wells. The publication of David Ketterer’s authorised biography and the 40th anniversary of the novelist’s death are likely to stimulate considerable interest in the work of John Wyndham and Plan for Chaos offers reviewers and feature writers a new angle on this influential writer.

Plan for Chaos

In this thrilling collection of stories, John Wyndham, author of the acclaimed classics The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos, conducts ten experiments along the theme of 'I wonder what might happen if . . .' There's the story of the meteor, which holds much more than meets the eye. In Chronoclasm a man is pursued by his own future. We meet a robot with an overactive compassion circuit. And what happens when the citizens of the future turn the past into a giant theme park? 'One of the few authors whose compulsive readability is a compliment to the intelligence' Spectator John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Benyon Harris was born in 1903, the son of a barrister. He tried a number of careers including farming, law, commercial art and advertising, and started writing short stories, intended for sale, in 1925. From 1930 to 1939 he wrote short stories of various kinds under different names, almost exclusively for American publications, while also writing detective novels. During the war he was in the Civil Service and then the Army. In 1946 he went back to writing stories for publication in the USA and decided to try a modified form of science fiction, a form he called 'logical fantasy'. As John Wyndham he wrote The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned), The Seeds of Time, Trouble with Lichen, The Outward Urge, Consider Her Ways and Others, Web and Chocky. John Wyndham died in March 1969.

The Seeds of Time

The 'outward urge' was a factor in the Troon inheritance. Successive generations of Troons, looking up at the stars, heard the siren voices that called them out into Space. And, as the frontiers of Space receded, there was usually one Troon, if not more, out there, helping to push them back. In an age in which what goes up need not necessarily come down, the likely adventures of the Conquistadors of Space are every bit as exciting as any world menaced by triffids.

John Wyndham

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