hairybloke's socialist republic

Night of The Triffids, The - Simon Clark (2001)

Posthumous sequels are not something to be lightly undertaken. Though it has to be said that literature tends to fair better in this respect than the film industry, which is always keen to plunder its past for a remake or a sequel, sometimes wisely and intelligently, but more often than not, disastrously and foolishly. For the most part literary sequels have been rarer forays but few reach the level of quality of the original, which, if it was planned as a stand-alone novel, should in most cases remain as such.
Baxter's 'The Time Ships' (a sequel to HG Wells' 'The Time Machine) is a rare instance of a novelist's dedication to the style and spirit of its provenance. So, in its own way, is 'Night of The Triffids'.
The novel, as an homage within an homage, begins as the original does with the disorientation of both the reader and the narrator as the narrator awakens and tries to work out why their world has changed. Twenty-five years on from John Wyndham's 'Day of The Triffids', the original narrator's son David takes up the tale.
Those unfamiliar with 'Day of…' (shame on you!) will be neatly brought up to date by his reminiscences in which he explains the social structure of the island and gives an overview of post-apocalyptic life among the Triffids, which the population now harvest to provide the raw materials of daily existence. Like Baxter, Clark is true to the spirit of the original - managing to capture Wyndham's style - and cleverly creates a society which, because of the lack of scientific and social development, has changed little from Wyndham's England of the Nineteen Fifties. The nature of the Triffids themselves is examined in more detail based in hints given by Wyndham in 'Day of..' which suggested that the walking carnivorous plants might be more intelligent than most people suspect. Forced into an evolutionary leap by the world-wide darkness which descends upon the earth, the creatures show new mutational changes, although these, which I'll come to later, seem far too rapid given the timescale of only a few weeks.
Due to a combination of unfortunate events David is taken to New York which is being ruthlessly controlled as an apartheid slave society where blind and black people are excluded from 'whites only' areas. In a sense this can be seen as a continuation of social values which were acceptable, if not widespread, in Nineteen Fifties America, and may indeed be prevalent in today's USA in many areas.
Like 'Day of…' this novel is told in fast-paced first-person narrative, peppered with end-of-chapter cliffhangers which compel the reader to continue.
My criticisms are few. The Triffids themselves are lessened by new and improbable mutant forms. An aquatic species emerges in the USA where, ironically, all the Triffids are bigger and nastier than their European counterparts. This might have been expected in warmer parts of the US (The original talks of ten-foot specimens found growing in Africa) but not in the more temperate New York. Some sixty-foot specimens appear near the end of the novel which stretches credulity to breaking point for me, given that at least three independent communities have been studying the Triffids for the last thirty years and have presumably seen no major changes in the creatures' physiology. At one point, it was discovered that the plants had possibly created a small floating island of matted vegetation upon which they travelled from the mainland to the Isle of Wight. This device worked because it merely suggested intelligence on the part of the plants without endowing them with new powers and drastically altered forms. Also, Clark puts a new and interesting spin on the nature of Triffid senses, suggesting that the tapping noise they make is both a form of communication and a sonar device which allows them to 'see' their prey in the way a dolphin 'sees' fish. However, the author does not take the opportunity to explore the impact triffids would have had on various eco-systems. Supposedly, all large mammals would have been virtually exterminated, along with birds. This would have had a knock-on effect on lower forms of life resulting in a readjustment of the balance of each eco-system. Also, it would be likely that, like humans, instances of immune dogs, cats etc could have survived and regressed to feral forms, with lower forms evolving to evade triffids in various ways. One would have expected some kind of climatic change with the loss of humanity's mechanised fuel-driven civilisation and the re-encroachment of vegetation in large areas around the world.
The ending, although exciting, seems somewhat rushed and contrived, but this didn't mar what I found to be an un-put-downable thriller, which hopefully will bring many new readers to the original novel to find out where it all started.