John Wyndham

When Bill Masen awakes blindfolded in hospital and carefully removes his bandages, he realises he is one of the few who can see; almost everyone else has been blinded by a meteor shower. Now, with civilisation in chaos, the triffids—huge, venomous plants able to 'walk', feeding on human flesh—can have their day. This stark vision of a desolate world infested...

The Chrysalids, John Wyndham's classic science fiction novel, is published as an Essential for the first time. David Strorm's father disapproves of Angus Morton's unusually large horses, calling them blasphemies against nature. Little does he realise that his own son, his niece Rosalind, and their friends harbour their own secret aberration that would label them as mutants. As David and...

"In a decade marked, much like our own, by simple fears, John Wyndham refused to make simple metaphors". -M John Harrison. A world paralyzed by genetic mutation- Wyndham takes the reader into the anguished heart of a community where the chances of breeding true are less than fifty percent and where deviations are rooted out and destroyed as abominations.

When Bill Masen wakes up blindfolded in hospital, there is a bitter irony in his situation. Carefully removing his bandages, he realises that he is the only person who can see — everyone else, doctors and patients alike, have been blinded by a meteor shower. A stunning new clothbound edition of one of the most famous science-fiction novels of the...

New to Penguin Modern Classics, to tie in with the release of the Steven Spielberg film, and with a new introduction by Brian Aldiss. Matthew's parents are worried. At eleven, he's much too old to have an imaginary friend, yet they find him talking to and arguing with a presence that even he admits is not physically there. This presence...

The Day of the Triffids is the most famous catastrophe novel of the twentieth century, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.' When a freak cosmic event renders most of the Earth's population blind, Bill Masen—one...

Vibrant reissue of five of John Wyndham's most famous novels In the sleepy English village of Midwich, a mysterious silver object appears, and all the inhabitants fall unconscious. A day later, the object is gone, and everyone awakens unharmed—except that all the women in the village are discovered to be pregnant. The resultant children of Midwich do not belong to...

The Day of the Triffids introduces readers to the triffids, a monstrous species of stinging plant; they walk, they talk, they dominate the world. The narrator of this novel wakes up in hospital to find that, by missing the end of the world, he has survived to witness a new world. But the new world that awaits him is both...

As David and Rosalind grow older, it becomes more difficult to conceal the differences which would label them as mutants from the village elders. Soon, they face a choice: wait for eventual discovery or flee to the terrifying and mutable Badlands. The Chrysalids is a post-nuclear apocalypse story of genetic mutation in a devastated world. It explores the lengths the...

The outward urge was a factor in the Troon inheritance. Successive generations of Troons, looking up at the stars, heard the siren voices that called them out into Space. And, as the frontiers of Space receded, there was usually one Troon, if not more, out there, helping to push them back. In an age in which what goes up need...

The influential masterpiece of one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant—and neglected—science fiction and horror writers, whom Stephen King called “the best writer of science fiction that England has ever produced.”—now in development as a miniseries directed by Johan Renck. “[Wyndham] avoids easy allegories and instead questions the relative values of the civilisation that has been lost, the literally blind...