#225 The Day of the Triffids (1951)

Author: John Wyndham
Title: The Day of the Triffids
Genre: Novel
Year: 1951
Pages: 230
Origin: bought from a second-hand bookshop
Nod Rating: 3 nods out of 5

 

‘When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.’

And so begins one of modern fiction’s great opening lines, the start of influential novel The Day of the Triffids. It is a work that has long fascinated the Worm, chiefly in his televised format of the original series many years ago, and less thrillingly in the 2009 remake. But, just what are these triffids, the Worm hears you ask excitedly?

Triffids are a tall and carnivorous plant species created by Wyndham. They are gangly and have the ability to walk using their roots in a freakishly sinister awkward way. Wyndham leaves the floor open as to their appearance: natural, or – as perhaps more likely – a man-made creation. In civilised society, the triffids are seen as a source of amusement and adornment in homes of the wealthy. But in Wyndham’s world, civilisation is coming to a close.

The book’s narrator and main character, Bill Masen, recounts the growth of triffids in his younger years. As a man who has worked with the fearsome plants, he notes a former co-worker’s ominous words: ‘If it were a choice for survival between a triffid and a blind man, I know which I’d put my money on.’ And, as luck would have, shooting stars falling to the planet result in the loss of sight for most of the world’s population. Bill, ironically in hospital and having surgery on his eyes, finds out – to his horror – that he must use his visual ability in the helping of others. The principal person of his endeavours is Josella (a continuing theme of the book is the rather oddly and awkward character names).

There are many shortcomings in this novel: the lack of a central plot, with the author instead moving Bill here, there and everywhere. Characters come and go, and none of them and entirely gripping or noteworthy. Also, the dialogue is close to cringe worthy, thereby stunting the growth of the characters and the reader’s attachment to them.

But The Day of the Triffids is a book about ideas, rather than plot or characters. This big idea being: what happens when the apocalypse comes. In the book’s introduction (a rather interesting one, the Worm being thankful of his particular edition), Barry Langford notes that the book may ‘sound merely a parody of the worst pulp clichés of fifties science fiction.’ However, Wyndham got there before many others; bringing about further originality with the appearance of the triffids and what they mean for human ingenuity and our ability to play God.

It is Bill’s striving for a brave new world that makes this short book an enjoyable read. Should they revert to a militaristic ‘neo-feudal plan’, turn to socialism, or instead pin their hopes on religious devotion? As Josella states towards the coming of the book’s climax:

‘Do you think we could – do you think we should be justified in starting a myth to help them? A story of a world that we wonderfully clever, but so wicked that it had to be destroyed – or destroyed itself by accident? Something like the Flood again. That wouldn’t crush them with inferiority – it could give the incentive to build, and this time to build something better.’

The next generation are to be left a harsh and daunting inheritance. Such a generation is not recounted in this tale (although there is a somewhat dubious follow-up to Wyndham’s work, The Night of the Triffids… something tells the Worm it will not be enjoyed as much). But Wyndham’s message was originally to the world of the 1950s: that of two rival ideologies and the threat of nuclear devastation. As a message, it rings very true in the twenty-first century.

 

Buy it here

 

The Virginia Woolf-Email Connection

Whilst reading John Naughton’s entertaining book – A Brief History of the Future: The Origins of the Internet – the Worm came across an interesting comparison: that of the technology of email and the author Virginia Woolf.

Allow the author, Naughton, to do the talking:

‘What makes email special is that it’s a strange blend of writing and talking. Although messages are typed, most of them read like stream-of-consciousness narratives, the product of people typing as fast as they can think. They are often full of typos and misspellings, and niceties like apostrophes often fall by the wayside. Indeed I sometimes think that the missing apostrophes are the key to understanding it. Sitting reading e-mail messages I am often reminded of the letters and diaries of Virginia Woolf, surely one of the greatest correspondents and diarists of the twentieth century. Her private jottings have the same racing immediacy, the same cavalier way with apostrophes, the same urgency.’

Naughton goes on to show examples from one of Woolf’s letters (dated 28 December 1929) and a recent email from a friend. The similarities are striking.

‘These two passages are separated by sixty-seven years and a world of social change, yet they clearly belong to the same genre – a highly personalised, subjective, compressed kind of reportage which blends external observations with private experience and eschews the typographic conventions usually employed to distinguish between one and the other.’

The author concludes with the belief that Woolf ‘would have loved email’. If only laptops and iPads were made available to great modernist writers such as Woolf, Joyce and Faulkner! The Worm likes to think that these heavyweights of literature would not be tempted by the dangerous time wasting peril that is Angry Birds.

#224 Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1957)

Author: L.T.C. Rolt
Title: Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Genre: Biography
Year: 1957
Pages: 430
Origin: bought from a second-hand bookshop
Nod Rating: 3 nods out of 5
 

 

In 2002, the BBC conducted a public poll in the hope of piecing together a collection of the 100 Greatest Britons. The list was populated with the usual suspects: Winston Churchill and Queen Elizabeth (and somewhat annoyingly, Princess Diana). But one name reached a height that surprised all: Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

 
Depending on your location in this fair country of ours (the United Kingdom, that is), Brunel’s name holds a particular attraction. In the westcountry and south of England he is widely seen as the father of the railway and the man who brought transport to the masses through his fine aequducts and famous bridges. He is highly thought of as a true engineering genius who was always stretching for more and better; his name being synonymous with the success of the Victorian age and its engineering magnificence. Who better, one could say, then a biographer who knows a thing or two about engineering. Step forward, L.T.C. Rolt.

Hailed by R.A. Buchanan as ‘the outstanding popular historian of engineering history and biography in the twentieth century’, Rolt completed several biographies on some of rails biggest names (including the big duo of George and Robert Stephenson). The Worm was lucky enough to pick up a cheap copy of a later edition of this book; one that – somewhat charmingly and honestly - kept the inaccuracies of the original edition (as well as Rolt’s erroneous blaming of others for some of Brunel’s mistakes). The book is divided into three sections: the birth and early years of Brunel’s career; his work on the railways and growth of the Great Western Railway company; the outline of his other exploits, including the building of the large ships the Great Western, Briton and Great Eastern. Detail is expanded on in some of Brunel’s notable achievements, as well as his engineering ability: including the Gauge war and his atmospheric experiments on rail.

It is clear that Rolt knows his stuff – the book is packed with engineering know-how. Luckily for the Worm (and other non-engineer enthusiasts) the author knows how to keep things simple and avoid tedious long pieces of dull information. Furthermore, Rolt knows how to string a sentence or two. For example, take his description of Brunel’s tragic viewing of the Royal Albert Bridge at the end of his life:

 

‘on a specially prepared platform truck, while one of Gooch’s locomotives drew him very slowly beneath the pier arches and over the great girders. For his railway career was ended. Broken by the last and most ambitious of all his schemes – his great ship – Brunel was dying… the engineer still blazed with defiant, unquenchable courage'.

 And here we have his writing on the mayhem that was the construction of the Thames Tunnel:

'And what an amazing drama it was, this stubborn struggle between man and earth which went on relentlessly, month after month, year after year in the darkness under the Thames. Always dramatic, and sometimes tragic, upon one occasion it became sheer fantasy’.

However, much of this effect is spoilt by Rolt’s continuing deference and fawning over Brunel throughout the entirety of the book. Rather than take the stance of critical biographer, Rolt plays the role of Head of the Brunel Fan-club. The faults of some of Brunel’s works (rail and boat) is not on the head of the engineer, but on the heads of others; with biased utterances found within each chapter. In places Rolt’s dramatic touches excite him to fever pitch; Brunel, he states with ‘no exaggeration’ was the ‘last great figure of the European Renaissance.’

But, the Worm is ready to forgive such an uncritical piece of work, such is the author’s clear enthusiasm for all things Brunel. Rolt’s sentimentality is shown in his – somewhat naïve words – about today’s biographies: ‘It has become fashionable nowadays not to praise famous men but to belittle them.’ Furthermore, his research is wide-reaching, taking in contemporary sources, family papers, and Brunel’s notebooks (some of which are no longer available for future biographers). As such, Rolt’s piece of work is one of considerable worth, despite its defects.

It is clear that Brunel lived a fantastic life, even if he did die at a relatively young age. The book’s cover notes this work as ‘the definitive biography of the engineer, visionary and great Briton.’ Engineer, visionary and great Briton, he undoubtedly was; but the claim of definitive biography is one that does not hold up.

Buy it here