WILLIAM COOK
considers whether Covid could prompt a revival of interest in the work of science-fiction writer John Wyndham
John Wyndham defined his sophisticated brand of science fiction as ‘I wonder what might happen if…?’ I wonder what he would have made of Covid? The outbreak of the pandemic certainly had much in common with his apocalyptic novels – especially early on, when no one had a clue what was happening.
When I was a schoolboy, in the 1970s, Wyndham was the only author we studied whom I also read for pleasure – yet few people seem to read him nowadays. I wonder why?
The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos still raise a flicker of recognition (though it’s increasingly rare to meet anyone who’s actually read them) but his other novels are more or less forgotten. Yet when I was struck down by Covid (on the mend now, thank goodness) he provided the perfect escape, into a netherworld more awful, yet more interesting, than our own. Who knows? Maybe the virus will prompt a revival for this erudite and thoughtful author, who deserves to stand alongside Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury as one of the finest science-fiction writers of the postwar era.
John Wyndham Parkes Lucan Beynon Harris was born in Warwickshire in 1903, the son of a philanderous barrister. His parents split up when he was eight, following a prominent and embarrassing divorce case. Thereafter he lived with his mother in a succession of spa hotels, and attended a succession of boarding schools, most notably Blundell’s and Bedales. After trying his hand at a variety of jobs, including farming, commercial art and advertising, he turned to writing short stories for American sci-fi magazines, under various pen names. During the war he served in the Royal Corps of Signals, landing in Normandy soon after D-day. He finally published his first novel in 1951.
Wyndham was already in his late forties when The Day of the Triffids was published, pretty ancient for a first-time novelist, but his long apprenticeship as a pulp-fiction writer stood him in good stead. A dystopian fantasy with a fascinating and terrifying theme (a spectacular comet shower blinds all but a handful of people, who must subsequently fight for survival against a mutant strain of carnivorous plants), it became a bestseller, spawning a succession of broadcast adaptations. At last, after 25 years as a jobbing hack, Wyndham had arrived.
His second novel, The Kraken Wakes (about a global battle against strange sea creatures), was also well received, but it’s his third novel, The Chrysalids, which was his masterpiece. Unlike most of his stories, which concern alien intrusions into the modern world, The Chrysalids is about a world which has regressed to the Dark Ages. This primitive society is plagued by hideous mutations, culled by ruthless witch hunts. Gradually you realise we’re living in the distant future, in the aftermath of a nuclear war that has eradicated virtually all of mankind, and virtually all knowledge of human history. His fourth book, The Midwich Cuckoos, was almost as good – a spooky tale about a brood of children with supernatural powers – but after that t the quality (and quantity) of his work w deteriorated dramatically.
T Trouble with Lichen (about a cure for aging), Chocky (about a boy with an imaginary friend who turns out to be an alien) and Web (about a mysterious island, inhabited by a deadly breed of spiders) all start strongly, but soon run out of steam. Having written four novels in six years, it took him 12 years to write the next four, and none of them bears comparison with the four that came before. By the time he died, of a heart attack, aged 65, it appears the well had already run dry.
Wyndham was a reserved and rather private man – perfectly friendly, but difficult to get to know. For most of his adult life he lived in the Penn Club in London, in adjoining rooms with his lifelong love, Grace Wilson, an English teacher. When she retired they married and moved to Hampshire, close to Bedales, where Wyndham had been so happy. They had no children. Most of Wyndham’s heroes seem rather like their author – confident and affable, but with little indication of any hinterland. Ironically, the one time his characters really come to life is in The
Chrysalids, which is told through the eyes of a child.
‘The best definition of the sciencefiction story that I know,’ wrote Wyndham, quoting the writer Edmund Crispin, ‘is one which presupposes a technology, or an effect of technology, or a disturbance in the natural order, such as humanity, up to the time of writing, has not in actual fact experienced.’ All of Wyndham’s novels obey this dictum, but The
Chrysalids is more than that. It’s about how it feels to be a child, stranded in an adult world, and it brings to mind that eight-year-old boy, caught in a court battle between his warring parents. Most of Wyndham’s writing is curiously impersonal, but in The Chrysalids, his one work of genius, I have a feeling he was writing about himself.