Classic watch

The Day of the Triffids
John Wyndham
Penguin £5.99, pp233

When The Day of the Triffids was published in 1951, John Wyndham could hardly have predicted the extent to which genetic meddling would dominate the news half a century on. It's possible to put too modern a slant on a novel that remains within the constraints of post-war science fiction, but as Barry Langford points out in his introduction, The Day of the Triffids is 'at heart a strict Darwinian parable'; the carnivorous plants are not sentient, malicious invaders from another planet, but the culmination of human hubris.

Set squarely in postwar England, Wyndham's apocalyptic vision of nature's triumph over civilisation is partly stylised, with the trappings of Cold War paranoia (the triffids are the result of Soviet biological experimentation), but though considered a conservative exponent of the genre, he 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, and the possibility of regeneration without offering easy answers.

Frightening and powerful, Wyndham's vision remains an important allegory and a gripping story.