The Quarter Century Project - Night of the Triffids by Simon Clark
Publisher - Hodder and Stoughton
At the end of THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, the hero, Bill Mason, his wife and baby son join a new colony on the Isle of Wight. This tiny community, temporarily safe in its island fortress, begins its work to eradicate the triffid menace and lay the foundations of a new civilization. Throughout the world similar colonies struggle for survival, while the implacable triffid plant continues its march, seemingly intent on wiping out humankind. THE NIGHT OF THE TRIFFIDS takes up the story twenty-five years later. David Mason, the grown-up son of Bill, is a pilot who eventually manages to reach New York where a very different sort of colony has been set up, a colony whose members seem to be immune to the triffid sting and where David comes face to face with an old enemy from his father's past. .
The sequel to a classic novel has a long history and some would say a checkered one. We get prequels and sequels and sometimes even a story jumping into different genres. I’m never too bothered by someone playing with another work - it does not remove the original’s own standing as a work and often that continues to be the more accomplished one. For me the test is what is that new piece of work brining to the table and for me the 2002 British Fantasy Award for Best Novel going to Night of the Triffids by Simon Clark is a bit of a head scratcher because beyond being a sequel to John Wyndham’s acclaimed novel there really isn’t that much to shout home about.
For those who have never read Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids this was a 1951 SF novel where the world notes a strange comet’s arrival and all those who see it are found blinded the next day. The main character Bill Masen was unexpectedly blinded prior to all this and was in hospital so avoided this (yes fans of 28 days later and walking dead this may sound familiar) and to make matters worse a popular but dangerous plant known as the triffid goes on the rampage. Triffids are very large, venomous and deadly to humans they also are mysteriously now very mobile. What follows is the United Kingdom going very quickly post apocalyptic and eventually Masen and allies escape to the Isle of Wight to start a new life.
Fifty years later in 2002 we now have a sequel in Clark’s novel. He imagines a story set only 25 years after Wyndham’s story. Night of the Triffids tells us that Masen’s community actually survived and indeed we follow now his son David an acclaimed pilot for the new community called into all sorts of daring missions. He awakes to find the world completely dark and soon discovers the triffids appear to have found one of the outpost communities the Isle works with. The strange darkness needs investigation but that leads to Masen being lost in a storm and soon trapped in an unknown location. Eventually rescued he finds his mysterious American allies have some secrets of their own….
If I’m feeling charitable I’d say this is very much what you could imagine Hollywood doing with the idea. The opening is really enticing as we feel Masen’s panic waking in total darkness and then discovering a sneak Triffid attack. Clark builds this well and throws alls sorts of problems at Masen to take on. Then we move into stranger territory his rescuers now aware that the Isle of Wight has a working fleet of airships and uses Triffid oil to fuel them is suddenly of such importance that Masen is instead taken by ship all the way to New York where he finds the great city on its haunches surrounded by forests of Triffids but bigger danger comes from within as groups within the human community start to fight against each other. Masen then has to work out whose side is he on.
As a straight forward action novel it totally passed the time. We get friends who become enemies and vice versa. Lots of big action sequence and Clark as a horror star knows how to make Triffids creepy. But ultimately I found this quite a by the numbers piece of work. If Wyndham is playing with dystopian ideas for post war Britain this story seems instead to be going down a familiar dystopian plot path and the surprises are exactly the ones you’d expect.
The story really lacks characters not out of B-movie casting and none really stand out. Masen’s narration is all die in period dialogue and I puzzled if really writing styles would not shift even a little in 25 years. There were some interesting ideas mooted but for me underdeveloped Clark finds evidence of segregation in New York but that feels lightly touched upon, what role women had to play in the apocalypse almost looked like a theme to be explored but instead becomes more a way to tell us who the bad guys are. Even a big reveal linked to the original novel feels fairly flat and slightly preposterous.
So for a few hours reading of an SF action potboiler you may have fun but I can’t see why this book won an award and it’s for me fairly forgettable. Day of the Triffids has cast a long shadow in these kind of stories while for me Night of the Triffids will flicker in and out of your eyes in moments.
