The Day of the Triffids

By John Wyndham

A PA story with a science fiction twist written in 1951.

A meteor shower/comet dazzled the world with a light show that almost everyone world wide goes outside to view. The next morning they all wake up blind. This causes the world the abruptly end. Millions starve and commit suicide. The few sighted survivors (and the previously blind who are able to cope just fine) divide into two broad categories. Those who want to let the blind die off, then start rebuilding society; and those who want to try to keep the blind alive (by various ways; using the sighted to provide, using the blind as labor guided by the sighted.)

The two main characters Bill and Josella end up learning how to be self sufficient. They acknowledge in a book from the '50s that people have become so specialized that no one remembers how to do everything needed to live. Imagine today. This would be even worse.

The PA aspect of the story was interesting, gripping and well done. The book brought up interesting points about who is the cruel one, those helping the blind - prolonging their ultimate demise, or those letting them die quickly. Do you keep societies rules or forge new ones to help you survive in a new world. They even speculate that the meteor shower was really some man made bomb from a satellite.

Now to the Sci-fi aspect of the story. The triffids. If I figured it right, some two decades before the blindness happens these plants show up all around the world. They are raised as a novelty mostly and then later for their oil. They are carnivorous plants with an ability to walk and extend a poisonous whip. Yeah you read that right. No they aren't alien but rather it's believed man-made.

The Triffids attack the humans after the blindness. They congregate around the few settlements left, attacking whenever the humans get near. It's kinda creepy. Normally I don't think I'd enjoy a story this far fetched but this was a well written story. I eagerly kept turning the pages to see what happened.

The book ends about 6 years after the end of the world with a good promise of the humans discovering a way to defeat the Triffids. So quite a happy ending for a PA book.

The biggest problem I had with this story and the one that keeps bugging me is the blindness. If the whole world saw the lights in the sky at night then it took what, 24 hours for the entire world to be exposed, when everyone wakes up the next morning, say 6 hours after exposure maybe?, they are blind. What? No one could call and warn the rest of the world? I don't know, I can't place my finger on it but the whole thing really bothers me.

This story has been made into a movie, radio drama, and various television broadcasts over the years. I haven't seen any but it should make for an entertaining show.