Customer Reviews: Read 59 more reviews...
 BRILLIANT!!!!!!! July 14, 2008
LED ZEPPELIN RULE! (UK)
Before this i would mainly read fantasy novels. I am studying English at A level and had to pick a non fantasy novel to do. And there isn't a better book to pick. Brilliantly written, great story line and all around superb! Would recomend to any one. I was hooked from the very first page and couldn't put it down. Wyndham draws you deep into the novel and keeps you wanting more even after the last page. BUY THIS BOOK!!!!
 Not as good as I hoped April 14, 2008
N. Burgess
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I always remember the TV adaptation terrifying me when I was a kid so I was really looking forward to reading the original book. The actual idea of killer plants is a very good concept and genuinely scary, but the story itself I found disappointingly slow to the point where I began to get quite bored, everything seemed to plod along at a monotonous pace and I ended up feeling quite underwhelmed by the book, which is a pity as the premise of the story is a good one.
Literally an impressionable novel April 12, 2008
J. C. Wright (London)
I don't know what drew me to write about this novel as I read it years ago, but while I do a fair bit of reading I often forget what I've read, but most definately not in this case. I still have vivid images of London falling to pieces as it becomes uninhabited. I found it quite scary, in a way and it certainly presented a lot of food for thought. I would recommend it as a novel that stands out.
 An excellent adaptation. January 4, 2008
Alexandra Coke (UK)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was raised listening to the dramatizations of plays and novels broadcast on Radio 4, and so I can spot a good one when I hear it - and `The Day Of The Triffids' is definitely one of those. You can head over to the reviews of the book if you want a critique of the story, so I'm going to focus on the more technical aspects of the radio play itself.
I've always been a fan of the book, and you'll be pleased to know that this adaptation stays almost entirely faithful. The only changes made are those which make it easier for the progression of the story as a play, rather than a book, and hardly any incidents have been omitted - a few have been mixed up, maybe, but nothing has been annoyingly changed, and that's saying a lot for most dramatizations of novels.
The casting is perfect: Peter Sallis captures Bill Masen perfectly, and the rest of the cast are just as good. The one fault with the voice-acting is that no children were employed - thus Susan is voiced by an adult woman pretending to be a child, and this can grate sometimes (as a result, one star has been deducted from the rating).
`The Day Of The Triffids' has always been described as a "cosy catastrophe", and indeed I can think of worse things happening to the world than a generation of humans being blinded - but this version manages to make the disaster believable, and some moments become particularly creepy when they cannot be seen (a glimpse of the streets at night, in the second episode, should not be listened to in the dark!). The problem of the triffids is also solved, since in film and television they often seem painfully fake.
Don't even bother with the films made of this book - stick with the radio adaptation, and it will bring the characters to life in a way that not even the old television series could do. I would heartily recommend this CD set for anyone who enjoys science fiction, and/or enjoys radio plays.
Just Brilliant October 5, 2007
Rod Williams (London)
Academics have written enough about this novel to fill an entire shelf at least, and that is perhaps not a good thing since it tends to detract from the fact that this is a marvellously entertaining and thought-provoking work, maybe the single best British SF novel of the Twentieth Century.
For those not in the know, triffids are genetically engineered six foot mobile plants whose main stalk ends in a trumpetlike `flower' from which a prehensile stinger can lash out. The stinger contains venom strong enough to kill a man. The triffids can also uproot themselves and walk on their three ambulatory roots. Also, they have sticklike growths which drum against the main stem, creating a rattling noise with which some believe they communicate among themselves.
For reasons we needn't go into, some years before the opening of the novel a large number of triffid seeds was accidentally released into the upper atmosphere ensuring that they were dispersed across the planet. Not so long after, triffids began growing and multiplying everywhere.
At the start of the novel however, triffid researcher Bill Mason, who has been in hospital after an accidental triffid sting to his eyes, awakens to a strangely silent world. As his eyes were bandaged he was one of the few people to miss a worldwide display of cometary debris burning up in the earth's atmosphere.
Soon he discovers that the strange fireworks have burnt out the retinae of everyone who witnessed them. In the days that follow, the very few who have kept their sight attempt to reorganise, but it is only Bill who realises that now the infrastructure of civilisation has disappeared, the triffids may now become masters of the earth.
Wyndham's three major works - this, `The Midwich Cuckoos' and `the Chrysalids' -all deal in their different ways with evolutionary issues and the battle between species for territory. It is here that the message is clearest, and shows an extinction event in which the triffids, until now contained and controlled by a more successful species, are suddenly given an evolutionary advantage. Triffids are carnivorous plants which may or may not have some form of rudimentary intelligence. It has been noted by Mason's colleagues that when attacking humans they inevitably aim for the eyes. Therefore, by a combination of circumstances, Wyndham quite chillingly shows us how a more successful species (which need not necessarily be a more intelligent species) could, in evolutionary terms, supplant us.
Much is made of Wyndham's rather quaint middle-class viewpoint and the fact that many of the survivors seem to be professional middle-class types. The interesting point about this is that it gives Wyndham a chance to have a swipe at some of the complacent attitudes of Middle England, such as the lady in charge of Tynsham Manor who would rather her community fail than surrender to immoral unchristian practices.
If nothing else it is an exciting page-turning wonder, in which we travel with the protagonists through the ruin of a Nineteen Fifties Britain, battling against not only the ubiquitous triffids, but the dark side of human nature.
Quite brilliant.
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