'All that web. It'd take billions, quadrillions of spiders... No, I can't believe it... it's inconceivable...'

Web was first published in 1979, ten years after John Wyndham's death. Had he lived to complete it, it is unlikely it would have reached the public in its existing form - Wyndham wrote to his brother expressing his frustration with the piece and his inability to shape it into a satisfactory form. It is a deeply flawed novel compared to his 1950s work, but in many ways it marks a return to John Wyndham's classic themes and motifs, and warrants attention for that reason if no other.

Synopsis

Recently widowed sociologist Arnold Delgrange, searching for a way to reconnect with life, is recruited into the Foxfield Project, an attempt to set up a perfect, utopian community on the remote Pacific island of Tanakuatua. The island's native population was relocated some decades earlier after atomic tests mildly irradiated part of the island, and refused to return even after the all-clear due to a curse placed by the tribe's high priest.

Arrival on Tanakuatua proceeds according to plan, but shortly after their ship departs the Project's radio is smashed, isolating them from the outside world. A group sent to climb the island's central volcano vanishes into the jungle without trace. An expedition by boat to the far side of the island finds the jungle canopy swathed in a strange, cloudy pall - and the first man to touch it is killed almost instantly by hundreds of simultaneously-delivered venomous bites. The 'cloud' is a vast quantity of spider's web, spun by spiders who have evolved to act co-operatively.

Delgrange and the Project's biologist, Camilla Cogent, are sent to examine the spiders and make preparations for a pre-emptive strike against the infestation should it threaten the group. They are captured by Tanakuatuan natives who came on the same ship as them, and are intent on enforcing the taboo placed on the island. They confiscate Delgrange and Camilla's protective gear and depart, leaving them stranded on the far side of the spiders' territory. But they manage to work out the secret of the islander's natural spider repellent and are able to escape.

They are too late. The Tanakuatuans have released thousands of spiders inside the Project compound and all the others have been killed. They manage to survive until help comes, and the island is sterilised by another bomb test. But baby spiders can travel for thousands of miles on the wind, and only time will tell if the new species has established itself elsewhere.

'...I began to wonder what they could do with this new power, to co-operate. It's quite frightening really. It has already brought them into conflict with species which were quite outside their orbit... It has even brought them into conflict with us - and the first blood went to them. I got to wondering whether we aren't seeing the beginning of a revolution; the beginning of a takeover of power.'

Analysis

There can be little disputing that Web is a deeply flawed novel. Even for a Wyndham book there is very little plot in the conventional sense. It starts slowly, with much attention given to characters and themes which aren't at all significant to the main thrust of the novel. The spiders themselves don't put in an appearance until halfway through, and while the concept of a social spider is a fascinating one it remains frustratingly unexplored, either in 'realistic' biological terms or in terms of its' science-fictional potential.

But for all its weaknesses Web is more of a 'classic' Wyndham story than any novel since The Midwich Cuckoos, written ten years earlier. The fragility of civilisation is touched upon, the narrator is simply an everyman in the wrong place at the wrong time. The main menace is, essentially, a hive-minded entity. There is no conventional climax. There is, however, a sage - a pragmatic intellectual, capable of thinking the unthinkable. Uniquely, where the likes of Bocker, Vorless and Zellaby were all men and older than the narrator, Camilla Cogent is younger and female. This may reflect Wyndham's own increasing age (the narrator Delgrange is clearly written as older than the likes of Bill Masen and David Strorm), but what is certain is that Camilla is the only female character in the novel with any depth, or even dialogue.

Actually, one would hope that Wyndham intended to do some more work on the characterisation here, as other than Delgrange only Camilla and the Tanakuatuan Naeta remotely approach three dimensions. His treatment of the Tanakuatuans is respectful, given his handling of non-Caucasian characters in his earliest work. They also add an entirely novel quasi-mystical element to the book - it's never made clear whether the spider mutation is due to radioactivity or Nokiki's curse. One would also hope he might have fixed the rather-too-convenient method by which the main characters escape from their captivity, too. There are a couple of plot-holes here - given that the spiders were relatively harmless prior to the radiation/curse, why did the natives need to know about a repellent? And given that its' source is on the far side of the island from the Project, across infested jungle, how did they originally reach it?

In the end one's abiding impressions of Web are two-fold. There is the memory of the creepily-presented spider swarms, waiting, like the triffids before them, outside a human outpost under siege. And there is a great sense of resignation at the novel's conclusion - that 'time will show'. All Wyndham's other works end either with the menace defeated or dispelled, or the heroes safe and en route to a refuge. But here neither is the case - the spiders have reached continental South America, and nothing is resolved. It may be a downbeat conclusion to this novel, and Wyndham's career, but it's an entirely appropriate one.