Tag: science fiction

John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos

I’m back. Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I was on holiday and dropped my phone into a pool, so I wasn’t able to log in to anything for a few weeks, and I’ve had pretty bad jet lag since I got back. The good news is I never stopped reading and have plenty to post about in the coming weeks.

The Midwich Cuckoos

Michael Joseph – 1957

Thanks to The Simpsons, I’ve had a rough idea of the plot of Village of the Damned since I was a kid. I only recently realised it was based on a book, and I remembered enjoying Day of the Triffids and The Chrysalids by Wyndham when I read them years ago, so I gave The Midwich Cuckoos a go.

This one starts off with an entire village being mysteriously knocked unconcious. 9 months after this, all of the women in the village give birth to weird children that all look and act the same. It turns out they’re psychic aliens or mutants or something, and they’re up to no good.

This one was more creepy than scary, but I quite enjoyed it.

The Day of the Triffids

Michael Joseph – 1951

I reread after finishing The Midwich Cuckoos because I knew I wouldn’t have much to say about that book alone. I genuinely did not remember how miserable this book gets. It’s awesome.

A dude wakes up after an eye operation and discovers that almost everybody else had been blinded. This scene reminded me of the opening of 28 Days Later. It turns out that movie was very much inspired by this book. So a few of the people who are able to see start trying to restart civilisation, and everything goes to Hell pretty quickly. I really liked this element of the book. The inherent selfishness of human nature is definitely the biggest threat to these characters. There’s also some sentient carnivorous plants with legs. This is an extremely enjoyable post-apocalyptic novel that blurs the lines between science fiction and horror. It reminded me a bit of that book Feral I read a few months ago too. I’d be shocked if Brian Evenson hadn’t read this one.

I’m actually going out of town again for another little while, but I have posts on freaks, zombies and a sinister statue coming up, so check back again soon.

The Possessors – John Christopher

I recently read T.E.D. Klein’s The Ceremonies, a horror novel that centers around a college instructor who is preparing a course on horror fiction. I have already read and reviewed most of the books that he discusses, but there were a few he mentioned that I had never heard of. This book, John Christopher’s The Possessors, was one of them.

The Possessors – John Christopher
Avon – 1966 (Originally published 1964)

An alien lifeform kills a child and possesses his body at a mountain cabin in Switzerland. The kid then starts possessing all of the other guests at the cabin. An infected person only has to touch your skin for a few minutes to pass on the infection. I’m using infection and possession in the same way here. You get fingered and turn into a cold alien.

This is basically Night of the Living Dead but with zombies that touch you up instead of eating you. It was published 3 years before that movie came out too, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Romero read this before shooting his film. The plot of The Possessors is pretty straightforward, and the story is predictable to an extent, but that didn’t bother me too much. It was the long-windedness of the writing that let me down.

There’s so much character building, and so little of it matters to the story. Maybe it’s supposed to help create tension, but it bored me. There’s an alcoholic character who is clearly destined to get possessed. She’s obviously a weak link who will jeopardize everything for everyone, and we know she’s going to get done away with. Despite this, Christopher provides details about her summer holidays as a girl and the names and fates of all her brothers and sisters and cousins and pets.

I think this is generally classified as science fiction rather than horror. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t heard of it. It’s quite similar to The Body Snatchers in both its premise and awkward classification status.

The Possessors wasn’t great. It’s a decent idea, but the pacing is just too slow. I think it would have been a much more exciting read if it were 30 pages shorter.