The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is one of those books whose titles I would occasionally come across throughout my lifetime of reading, but never really knew what it was about or even why it was famous. Recently, I decided to watch a 2008 film called Blindness in which a strange, unexplained disease rapidly spreads striking people suddenly blind. Because it spreads like a disease, we follow its earliest victims who are quarantined, but much like The Day of the Triffids, it explores society's collapse. Because I found the movie so intriguing, I explored its background and found a reference to this book which I eagerly ordered so I could finally read it.

In some ways, it's classic 50's science fiction with all of its faults and favors. However, putting aside both of these and reading it in a 21st century context, I found it still held up quite well. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the apocalyptic tale that quietly unfolds. In many ways, you could replace triffids with zombies and imagine a host of Triffid literature and movies (The Walking Green, Night of the Man Eating Plants) that might have followed. The parallel is there in that the triffids are dangerous, but they weren't the cog that caused society's collapse. They only took advantage of it once it happened.



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