I can't remember when I first read The Midwich Cuckoos, but it was certainly within 30 years of the end of World War II. Now, almost 40 years later, the postwartime feel is even more present in this short novel, despite the book itself being published in 1957. The way the army moves in immediatel...
Chocky was the last novel John Wyndham wrote before his death (although a semi-finished one called Web was published posthumously) and for some reason I never read it while I was in high school – although I remember flicking through a copy at the library and not being intrigued enough to properly...
'Consider Her Ways': *NO SPOILERS*A very intriguing story indeed.Apart from being somewhat Kafkaesque being a kind of metaphysical journey, where the protagonist is constantly questioning her own lucidity, it is Wyndham at his core. The insomnia being experienced by Mother Orchis lends easily to ...
'Web' is a surprisingly pleasing addition to the career of John Wyndham. Published some ten years after his death, it follows similar themes to several of his better known works.It is another familiar premise. After an episode of PTSD, our protagonist purchases an island in the south Pacific in o...
The next stop in my end-of-the-world reading marathon was The Day of the Triffids, the 1951 man-versus-plants tale by John Wyndham. After an apocalyptic journey across the United States in The Stand and Swan Song, it was fascinating to read about how the U.K. might tackle doomsday and I have to s...
Originally published on my blog here in December 2011.John Wyndham's most famous books, The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned) are fairly serious stories of disasters, a theme also followed in The Kraken Wakes. The Trouble with Lichen, a later novel, is ...
I feel trite saying it, because i say it after every Wyndham book i read, but there is nothing this man writes that i don’t love. I’m sure i’m not capable of fully explaining why, either. There is just something in a combination of his writing style and the subject matter that are just perfect to...
