The Day of the Triffids

"Triffids combined – for the first time, really, in science fiction – the science bit, the satellites and the germ warfare and dealing with a destroyed world, with the thing we associate with John Wyndham: humanity. What happens to people? How do people react? And because he joined those two things together, suddenly he was lifted into a whole different level of brilliance. He’d done this very technical apprenticeship of writing pulp fiction for people who aren’t necessarily very keen readers or students of literature – they just want to be entertained, and they want the story to keep moving, and they’re going to get bored really easily. Then he suddenly combined that with this incredible emotional depth. They’re also funny books. There’s a lot of wit in them. They’re very clever. And I think that is what makes John Wyndham stand out and stay fresh for generation after generation: the humanity that informs all his books, the emotional intelligence, really stands out in the field. Loads of women who say they don’t read science fiction, who think they’ve never read science fiction, actually have read all of John Wyndham, because he writes fantastic female characters, and he writes in a way that resonates. I think that’s why we’re still reading and talking about Wyndham, when lot of science fiction of the time is terribly dated."