early 30 years have passed, fictionally speaking, since the events detailed in John Wyndham's classic "cozy catastrophe," The Day of the Triffids (1951). That book described the near-extermination of humanity under the twin assaults of the Blinding--a green meteor shower of natural or unnatural origins which robbed the majority of their eyesight--and the subsequent unchecked proliferation of the already-established deadly triffids: carnivorous, quasi-intelligent ambulatory plants bigger than a person, possibly alien invaders, possibly the result of Russian biological programs. Narrated by William Masen, sighted survivor, Wyndham's novel charted the first few days, months and years of the apocalyptic aftermath, ending with Masen, his wife and young son David secure on the Isle of Wight among a growing community.
Clark chooses for his sequel's narrator David Masen, now of course a young man in his prime. A pilot, David is part of the Isle of Wight's small air force--its planes powered by refined triffid oil--until the day when he crashes while investigating a strange atmospheric darkness that has apparently swallowed up the whole globe. As a muted daylight returns, David finds himself on a large floating raft of vegetation, besieged by triffids. His one human companion is a 16-year-old savage girl castaway.
Rescue occurs in the form of a passing American ship, the first cross-Atlantic contact since the collapse of civilization. The crew and passengers of the ship seem friendly enough at first, promising to return David home. But soon David and the young girl--whose name is discovered to be Christina--are being shanghaied back to New York. There David encounters the largest concentration of humanity he has ever seen: some 300,000 citizens on the island of Manhattan, enjoying a lifestyle almost pre-Blinding in its variety, level of comfort and technology.
But this utopia turns out all too swiftly to be a dystopia, whose foundations rest on coercion, slavery, forced breeding and the undying enmity of its leader, who proves to be an old enemy of David's father. David is rescued from becoming a geopolitical cat's-paw by an opposition group based in the southern United States, whose spies have infiltrated New York. Casting in his lot with these more principled rebels, he soon discovers himself in a pitched battle with his father's ancient foe--who happens to be the father of the woman David has fallen in love with, Kerris Baedekker. The entire future course of civilization rests on the outcome of their struggle.
Bigger triffids, smaller thrills
Simon Clark has the unenviable task of trying to match one of the most revered novels of the genre, a book that had mainstream impact as well through wide sales and its movie version. One can argue about whether such a challenge should ever have been attempted. But assuming one chooses to take up this particular gauntlet, two questions need to be asked. How faithful to the original is he? And what new does he bring to the table?
In terms of fidelity to Wyndham's vision, Clark tries to duplicate the one-two punch Wyndham devised: natural catastrophe (the celestial darkness) plus (modified) triffid attack. But the darkness angle just kind of disappears without consequence. Clark scores fairly high in pastiching Wyndham's style, at least. David Masen is very much his father's boy in terms of worldview and narrative abilities. A little slow on the uptake, he moves cautiously through scenarios that a brighter lad might buzz through more swiftly. But there was a simple charm in William Masen's stolid, commonsensical manner that persists in David. Clark--via David--does not indulge in snazzy banter or anachronistic slang or jazzy stylings. And the new romance is as strictly G-rated as before. This is pretty much meat-and-potatoes prose, as was Wyndham's. Although Wyndham did hit notes of poetry and grim beauty more often than Clark does. About the only such instance in Night is the chapter on the floating island, which strikes creepy notes akin to those found in the sea horror of William Hope Hodgson.
But because Clark is dealing with a fait accompli, he cannot recreate the thrills we experienced in Wyndham's book associated with witnessing the instant yet slow-motion crumbling of civilization. There are no melancholy frissons here relating to losing a great treasure. David and his generation have known no other world. Additionally, Clark makes a crucial error in his internal chronology. Wyndham's book took place in one of "yesterday's tomorrows," a postulated future beyond the novel's 1951 publication date. Clark ignores this fact entirely, and seems to think the Blinding occurred in 1951. Thus a character can speak about knowing Carl Jung in his prime, an impossibility in Wyndham's original timeline. Also, hewing to a 1950's technology--a more or less mandatory move--Clark's novel seem antiquated: no computers, no genetic engineering, no video cameras.
Clark's major innovations amount to two: he opens up his canvas to America, with hints of other countries, and he amps up the triffid menace. The first change is rather more disconcerting than the second. Like Brian Aldiss's similar Greybeard (1964), Wyndham's book was so quintessentially British that transplanting the action to the United States seems like a betrayal. Although Clark's American characters are fairly engaging, all the romance of the British landscape and national psyche are missing. As for the new and improved triffids, I find them believable. Wyndham left open their future development, and Clark does some ingenious things with their adaptive natures.
