h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Anyone else think that Triffids just are not really a good baddie anymore due to cheap see through plastic?

In the book they used wire mesh masks and that, but nowadays they would not really pose that much of a threat....

I've only seen the BBC series, but the way I see it the real threat was when they got out and into the unprotected public. It's all very well knowing which readily manufacturable materials would stop them, but no good at all if you're surrounded by them and have no manufacturing tools to hand! And, of course, most people were also blind...

I loved that story - as good as HG Wells.

But, yes, it wouldn't quite work today for those reasons. They'd need to be a little more deadly.

There was an attempt to update this story by Sky a few years back, in a series called The Strangerers.

It fell flat by being poorly written, poorly plotted and poorly acted. It never got beyond a first series, IIRC.

RF

Hmmmm Sky One original drama eh? About as close to a guarantee of satisfaction as you can get eh?

Well, they probably contracted it out to another Murdoch subsidiary, but 0.8 points out of ten for giving it a try, eh?

RF

RF getting the evil grin smiley wrong?! What is the world coming to?

Triffids is a fantastic story, though there probably would be a few changes were he writing today. But who else would think of carnivorous ambulant plants as a deadly enemy?

As a kid, on a long car journey, I listened to an audiobook version of The Chrysalids. And more recently, while cataloguing a school library, I came across and read The Trouble with Lichen. They're both good reads too.

TRiG.

Didn't the triffids only become a problem after most of the world's humans were blinded by radiation from some meteors?

I would say the Chrysalids is probably his novel that has aged the best.

Almost everyone on the planet was blinded by watching the pretty lights and then some sort of plague swept what was left of the population.

The triffids just had to wait around for some blind person to blunder past and then whip out a sting to kill them and then stand about waiting for them to rot.

The few remaining sighted people were reduced almost to a stone-age existence.

It's a bit optimistic to imagine all their problems could be solved by a bit of plastic

Brilliant book!

It was a great book and I loved the BBC series.

I also like dthe Midwich Cuckoos - a much better title than given to the film - Village of The Damned - though it was a good film.

i tried to re read the chrysalids about 6 few months ago. i found the language so old fashioned and stilted i couldn't continue.

not a reflection on the quality of john wydham i hasten to add, but it made me wonder if the changes to english language in the past 50 years haven't been more extreme than the previous 50. i have no such problem reading victorian fiction or earlier.

i think the difference is that with dickens for example we knowingly move into a different milieu. with wyndham etc we are dealing with characters and settings that we ought to be familiar with; and yet we find them speaking and behaving in a way that is (now) alien to us.

i think when an author builds his work on the understanding that the reader will be first hand familiar with much of what is there, if not the places and circumstances, at least the characters, and that familiarity largely disappears as that world itself disappears, there is a severe disconnection.

my 2 cents as to why the stuff hasn't aged well.

Hmmm... I think that possibly with "The Chrysalids" in particular he was aiming for a bit of an archaic style? As that would fit in with the people of Labrador?

Put me in mind of the Amish community. The Chrysalids is my favourite, despite having studied it for O-levels. I found Kraken Wakes the hardest read.

I don't think the TV version of Triffids was scary enough. Probably aimed too much at family viewing.

I quite liked The Strangerers. Had them as my wallpaper for ages!

Anyhoo, I like Triffids. I think they are very scary, because even if I wasn't blind, being surrounded by the bloody things and being punched by big sloppy tongue things, even if I was wearing a space suit I reckon they could still have me over and trample me to death.

Don't go by the Beeb's monsters, although that sound they made stil scares me when I am on tube platforms - the rattle to announce the train always makes me think of Triffids.

Just thought I'd mention this little gem here, since there may be Day of the Triffids fans about:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listings/index.shtml?Today

That link will take you to the BBC Digital Radio 7 full schedule. If you look at the 18.30 - 19.00 and the 00.30 - 01.00 slots, you'll find that Roger May is reading The Day of the Triffids in 17 episodes. Episode one has just been read, but don't despair. If you look up at the top right of the list you'll find a big red button marked "Listen Again Schedule", so you can listen to any episodes you've missed. I've only listened to Roger May reading this book about 3 or 4 times on BBC Radio 7 over the past few years, so I'll have to listen to the whole lot again. He reads it excellent well

I always thought the power of the triffids story was in how humanities susceptibility to the relatively benign triffid population was overturned when one of our senses was removed, suddenly we are prey to an organism better adapted to take advantage of that.

It left me with a sense of 'were not as secure as we think we are'

>> ...my 2 cents as to why the stuff hasn't aged well. <<

And probably worth the pound!

The movie version (1963) also got caught up in contemproaneous realities. It ended up in southern Spain and a US nuclear submarine while out on the Eddystone Light they discovered that salt water hosed with great pressure would kill the buggers.

peace
~jwf~

Spooky - I was thinking about the Day of the Triffids only yesterday.

It was only the triffid breeders that had wire masks, I think - not the general population - so I think they would still be a threat. The critical thing was the worldwide blindness anyway.

I've loved DOTT for years - it's just such a good *story* - and about a year ago somebody loaned me all his other books. I thought they were quite easy to read - thoroughly enjoyed them, too. I particularly like the fact that he tends to write in the first person, so I know that nothing *too* dreadful can happen to the main character I don't like being scared!

But really his books are more about how people react when society is threatened or turned upside down, I think. The aliens or whatever are the mechanism for dramatically achieving that situation. So they're interesting, but not what I'm reading the stories for.

Mol

BTW, did anybody notice that the movie '28 Days Later' has almost exactly the same plot as Day of the Triffids? Just substitute "carnivorus plants" for "fast zombies" (I don't care what anybody says, thematically they're zombies!) and "blindness" for "zombie plague"...