In John Wyndham's classic bestseller The Day of the Triffids the world has been overwhelmed by killer plants that have blinded almost the entire population. As the novel ends, Wyndham's narrator scientist Bill Masen is escaping, with his wife and four-year-old son, to the Isle of Wight where a small colony of survivors is holding out. Simon Clark's sequels picks up the story twenty-five years on. The survivors are safe, for the time being at least, on their island, where they have continued efforts to combat the triffids, while also striving in various ways to build a new civilization - in a Mother House, for example, women spend their lives endlessly giving birth. Elsewhere in the world, similar colonies cling to survival, while the triffids persist in their attempts to destroy humanity. One morning Bill Masen's son, David, now grown up, wakes to a world plunged into darkness. Now, the triffids have an advantage over even sighted humanity. Simon Clark has written an inventive and fast-moving sequel to Wyndham's story, crafting an elegant and scary tale of humanity's ongoing fightback against the triffids.
Industry Reviews
Inventive and fast moving - good old fashioned fun. Washington Post Readers will relish Clark's uncomplicated cocktail of chlorophyll and human blood. Clark's narrative is particularly well-paced ... The Night of the Triffids makes salutary reading for anyone who has noticed - as John Wyndham did - that advanced industrial civilization exists in a fragile condition of unstable equilibrium. Financial Times The world's most famous killer plants are back and nastier than ever in The Night of the Triffids, Simon Clark's authorized sequel to The Day of the Triffids ... the new book begins 25 years after the earlier novel finishes, with David, son of Wyndham's Bill Masen, waking on the Isle of Wight to find that the sun has gone out ... it is the sections where [Clark] gives rein to his own invention that really grip. Guardian [T]his stays faithful to the spirit of the original. A respectful, creditable effort. Time Out Written in the style of the original. Big in scope, big in action ... Huddersfield Examiner The killer plants are back in Simon Clark's superb The Night of the Triffids. The Zone Clark manages to combine his voice almost seamlessly with that of John Wyndham SFX Clark has faithfully recreated Wyndham's style, and he quotes or inverts many themes and events from the original. The writing is crisp and unfussy ... while the pace of the story is breakneck and the climax exhilarating. The Scotsman It's never easy writing a sequel to a classic, but Simon Clark should satisfy sci-fi fans with this follow up to John Wyndham's hit The Day of the Triffids. Peterborough Evening Telegraph Continuing the classic tale of alien invasion begun 25 years ago in John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, Clark envisions a world poised to fight back against their invaders. Winner of the 2002 British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, he retains a feel for sf pulp horror in an action-filled tale that captures the spirit of the original story. Recommended for most sf collections. Library Journal In John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (1951), mankind is overtaken - and much of it blinded - by the demonic walking plant of the title, a monster created in a lab in an act of Cold War profiteering. Clark (Vampyrrhic etc.) picks up the story more than 25 years later, puts a new narrator at the helm and spins a brisk and engaging adventure-cum-horror yarn. Clark's narrator is David Masen, son of scientist Bill Masen (the protagonist from Wyndham's book). The Masen family, along with a handful of other survivors, has set up an outpost on the Isle of Wight, and have gone about rebuilding society. A major part of this renewal involves a particularly bizarre idea called the Mother House, a convent-like home where women spend their lives giving birth over and over again. All seems well, until one morning when the sun doesn't rise and the Triffids, long thought condemned to the mainland, attack ... this crafty continuation is elegant in its construction. Clark's prose is clean, thoughtful and perfectly suited to his faux doomsday-memoir approach. Less cautionary than the original, but more literary than many books of its ilk, this is a truly enjoyable voyage. Publisher's Weekly
