John Wyndham (1903-1969)

(John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris)

Novelist.
Born 1903; died 1969. Active 1923-1969 in England, Britain, Europe

Article contributed by

David Anthony Theodore Ketterer, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Liverpool

For a period in the 1950s John Wyndham (1903-69) was the best selling science-fiction author in the UK and Australia. Possibly the science-fiction novels of H. G. Wells (1866-1946) may have been more widely read in those countries, but that itself fed Wyndham's readership because Wells's science fiction was his primary model; he was regarded as Wells redivivus, a young Wells continuing his career in the 1950s. However, he should not be regarded as a Wells clone. Like Wells, Wyndham was an overt Darwinist, but Wells was a member of the lower middle-class on the way up, while Wyndham was a member of the upper middle-class fallen on hard times. This difference of perspective, along with Wyndham's respect for strong females (and anxiety about female sexuality) are enough to give his major works - particularly the series of novels initiated by The Day of the Triffids (1951) - a revisionary cast. Account should also be taken of the fact that, unlike Wells, Wyndham regarded himself as a Darwinian failure - he was childless.

At the same time the master of the cosy catastrophe tag that Brian W. Aldiss applied to Wyndham in 1973 in Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction is misleading and smacks of an anxiety-of-influence put down. What is cosy about a conclusion like that in The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) which has a group of gifted children (an example of Wyndham's successor-species) blown to bits? Anxiety, fear, and anguish but not cosiness is at the heart of Wyndham's fiction. The world destruction it stemmed from was ultimately not World War II (and the Great War) but rather the breakdown of his parents' marriage when he was eight years old.

Wyndham's importance to the history of science fiction comes down to four achievements. He provided a bridge between the British scientific romance tradition that culminated with Wells and modern British science fiction. He managed this in part because his early work was published in America and so he also provided a bridge between American and British science fiction. As a result many of the important names in subsequent British SF - among them, John Christopher, J. G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss, and Christopher Priest - have, whether they acknowledge it or not, been influenced by Wyndham. The catastrophe theme with which Wyndham is associated led to a resurgence of that theme in British science fiction. His third achievement was to write a form of science fiction that had appeal for the general reader, especially the female general reader. His favouring of terms like “logical fantasy” or “reasoned fantasy” over what he regarded as the misleading, Vernean-inspired American invention “science fiction” had to do with his battle to transcend a small fan-based readership of science fiction (in the UK especially). As a consequence, some fans have been reluctant to acknowledge Wyndham's true worth. Fourthly and finally, that worth involves a recognition

This article in full comprises 7880 words but only the first 600 or so words are available to non- members.

All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors. To read about membership, please click here.

First published 07 November 2006

Citation: Ketterer, David Anthony Theodore. "John Wyndham". The Literary Encyclopedia. 7 November 2006.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php? rec=true&UID=4820, accessed 4 November 2008.]