As someone with two middle names, I know the difficulty of getting them all
onto official forms. Let's spare a thought, then, for John Wyndham Parkes Lucas
Beynon Harris, born 1903, died 1969, and, as John Wyndham, one of the greatest
science-fiction writers of the last century.
Any blog which has as one of its obsessions the end of the world can't neglect John Wyndham. In The Day of the Triffids he wrote
one of the genre's masterpieces. It's a wonderful book: when what seems to be a
fantastic and beautiful meteor shower lights up the night skies, almost everyone
goes out to watch it. The next morning, they're all blind. This would be bad
enough if the world hadn't also come to rely on a genetically engineered
ambulent plant, the triffid, which also has carries a lethal sting.
This was the first novel I ever read in one hit, under the covers with a torch
at the age of eight, unable to stop. Much of it must have passed me by at the
time, but regular rereadings since have not lessened its power.
Wyndham ended the world again with The Kraken Wakes (called Out of
the Deeps in the US), in which rarely glimpsed acquatic aliens invade the
deepest parts of our oceans and then calmly and effectively take over the
planet by dramatically raising the sea level.
Along with Day, Wyndham's other masterpiece is The Chrysalids (called Re-Birth
in the US). Generations after a huge nuclear war, tiny communities scattered
around the depleted, radioactive globe struggle to survive. The story is told
from the viewpoint of a boy growing up in rural Canada, under a warped
Fundamentalist Christian culture obsessed with stamping out mutations that do
not breed true. But the boy has a secret, one he shares with other children
scattered around the world. It's a brilliant, gripping book.
I'll discuss his other books below. But let's begin the cover cavalcade. One
reason I took so long to get to Wyndham on this blog is the sheer profusion of
covers I had to collect. The search for them made my brain hurt. I apologise in
advance for the low-quality of some of these images, but with many of them should
be able to click for a bigger, more detailed version.
Here are the original 1950s and 1960s hardbacks of most of his books, published
by Michael Joseph. The last, Web, is actually a posthumous work, first
published in 1979. It features a group of people trying to set up a utopian
community on an uninhabited Pacific island. Uninhabited, that is, except for a
new species of spider, evolved under the effects of nuclear testing, which have
learned to work as a community. Not one for the arachnophobes.
Here are some other early hardbacks--the 1951 Doubleday edition of Triffids,
the Dobson edition of Jizzle (a collection of horror stories), and two
Walker editions. The Midwich Cuckoos cover is by Jack Gaughan.
The Midwich Cuckoos is another great book. A UFO appears over a sleepy
English village, and erects a force field keeping the world outside at bay.
Everyone inside the village is rendered unconscious. All attempts to get in
fail. Then, the UFO suddenly departs, and everyone wakes up, unharmed--except
that every fertile woman in the village is now pregnant.
The Trouble with Lichen is a look at what might happen to society after
the accidental discovery of a "cure" for ageing.
In the UK, Penguin have been Wyndham's paperback publisher from the start. The
original Triffids paperback was one of the first Penguins to feature a cover
illustration, based on a sketch by Wyndham himself.
Many other Penguin Wyndhams from the 1950s and 1960s had covers designed by
John Griffiths.
In the 1970s, Harry Willock redesigned the Wyndham range for Penguin.
The Outward Urge tells the future of humans colonising the inner Solar
System through a series of novellas about one family. The highlight is a
gripping thriller where two explorers are trapped together on Mars, millions of
kilometres from help, when a head injury sends one of them just a little bit
mad. The co-author, Lucas Parkes, is another couple of Wyndham's names--not
entirely sure about the quality of what he'd written, as it moved away from his
usual earth-bound, present-day milieu, Wyndham invented a co-writer to shift
any criticism onto.
Chocky, one of Wyndham's last books, is a touching story about a young
English schoolboy who becomes mentally linked to an alien. The Seeds of Time,
like Consider Her Ways, is a short story collection.
In the early 1980s the books had another redesign, this time featuring painted
covers by Peter Lord. These, for the most part, are the editions I borrowed and
reborrowed from the local and the school libraries. The series also came as a
boxed set.
In the late 1980s there was another redesign, with paintings from Mark
Salwowski. These are, for the most part, the editions I used birthday book
vouchers to horde.
In the late 1990s, Triffids was released as one of the Essential
Penguins, a series of very nicely designed classics.
And then, in the late 1990s, another redesign, this a rather cartoonish one at
the hands of Spencer Wilson.
Several of Wyndham's books have also been given the Penguin Classics treatment.
And, to bring us up to date, Penguin have just reissued five of Wyndham's books
with new covers by an artist I know not. UPDATE: The tremendously wise John Self has
done the research, and says that the cover artist is Brian Cronin. A follow-up post on this chap's other covers is a-coming.
But wait! There's more. As well as some various random covers I may as well
bung in here (including those for the dire Triffids movie, the excellent
Triffids TV series, and the excellent children's TV Chocky).
Other paperback houses have also put out Wyndham--Ballantine in the 1950s and
1960s, and Coronet/NEL in the 1970s and 1980s.
Tnen there's this hardback edition from Gollancz, as part of their SF
Masterworks series. This is a digital image by Fred Gambino.
Finally, in the US these days, Wyndham seems to be rather less well known.
Fortunately for Americans, Triffids is available as part of the Modern
Library (as a "lost" classic, oddly enough), and The Chrysalids
as an upcoming NYRB Classic.
So! You've some reading to be doing.
Labels: Brian Cronin, End of the World, Fred Gambino, Gollancz, Harry Willocks, John Wyndham, Mark Salwowski, NYRB Books, One Book Multiple Covers, Penguin, Peter Lord, Spencer Wilson
Levi Stahl said...
I was excited to see The
Chrysalids on the NYRB list, because Wyndham is essentially unknown here
aside from Day of the Triffids, which is such a brilliant book that I
don't understand why it didn't drive me to see what else Wyndham had written.
You've convinced me to at the very least order from the UK the Kraken book and The
Midwich Cuckoos; those most recent redesigns are lovely. (Though it's hard
to imagine a design that could surpass that mid-century Penguin Classics
edition of The Midwich Cuckoos that features the photo of the
guilty-looking women and the suspicious-looking man.
JRSM said...
If you loved 'Triffids'
it's hard to see how you'll fail to enjoy those others. The edition of
'Midwich' to which you refer must be one I didn't come across. I'll have to do
some more hunting--it sounds ideal.
Levi Stahl said...
The edition of The
Midwich Cuckoos I'm thinking of is this one, which I've just ordered from the Book Depository. Lovely cover,
fitting nicely with the rest of the current batch of Wyndham covers.
JRSM said...
Phew! I had that one!
The Book Depository is great for getting stuff from overseas, isn't it? Far too
much of my income goes their way these says.
downtown guy said...
Sadly, the copy of Triffids
that I'm about to start reading is the one with the crappy
hand-gripping-the-earth cover.
JRSM said...
It's not a good cover, but
at least the contents will be great. Having written all of this, I've now gone
back to reread 'The Kraken Wakes again'. Great stuff.
John Self said...
Great comprehensive post,
JRSM. Levi, you will not be disappointed by the NYRB edition of The
Chrysalids, which in my opinion is Wyndham's best book by some way.
Those new Penguin covers are terrible, aren't they? I had seen one of them but
hoped it was a one-off. These look like they should be children's editions
issued by Puffin, but have the Penguin logo so must be intended for adults.
Yuk. I'll stick with the Modern Classics where possible.
Steerforth said...
Great post (as always).
Peter Lord was a colleague of mine in Ottakar's, managing a branch in Lincoln.
He is an extremely shy man and I struggled to get him join in any conversations
when we were at managers' meetings.
I can't remember how long it was before he eventually mentioned that he'd done
the John Wyndham covers (which I grew up with).
Chrysalids is one of my favourite novels and it's a great title too. Why did
the American publishers mess with the title?
JRSM said...
Yes, 'Chrysalids' is
probably his best, but 'Triffids' behind by only a nose/leaf.
Still don't know who did those new Penguins--the style looks a bit familiar, maybe
from a comics artist, but I can't work it out.
Steerforth, you knew Peter Lord? Those covers are great! I think I said in the
post that they're the covers I grew up with too. The 'Midwich Cuckoos' one in
particular freaked me out, and I love the way that his triffids look like real
(but dangerous) plants, rather than the B-movie monsters most other artists
have come up with.
I'm not usually a fan of audiobooks, but my wife borrowed one of 'Chrysalids'
from a library once, read by James Wilby, and I couldn't help getting sucked
in.
John Self said...
Had a look in Waterstone's
today: the new Penguin covers are by Brian Cronin. I still think they're terrible, far too bucolic and gentle in style
for Wyndham, who really wasn't as cosy as Aldiss suggested.
JRSM said...
Ah, magic. Thanks for that,
John: I'll amend the post accordingly. And you're right--just because Wyndham's
work often focused on middle-class characters, there was nothing
"cosy" about the horrors he inflicted on his fictional worlds. I like
Aldiss a lot, but he was wrong on this one.
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