Other editions of book The Day of the Triffids

When Bill Masen wakes up in his hospital bed, he has reason to be grateful for the bandages that covered his eyes the night before. For he finds a population rendered helpless by the blindness that followed the spectacular display of bright green lights that filled the night sky; a population at the mercy of the Triffids. Once, with their ability to move and their carnivorous habits, the Triffids were just botanical curiosities. But now, with humans so vulnerable, they are a potent threat to humanity's survival. It is up to people like Bill, the few who can still see, to carve out a future...

The most famous catastrophe novel of the twentieth century, John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, 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 of the lucky few to keep his sight - finds himself trapped in a London jammed with sightless mobs who prey on those who can still see. But another menace stalks blind and sighted alike. With nobody to stop them the Triffids - walking carnivorous plants with lethal stingers - rise up as humanity stumbles and falls . . .

This book is science fiction at its best. Here the author presents carnivorous plants made deadly by great size and the ability to move from one place to another, combined with the near-universal blindness of the human survivors caused by a meteor shower. The idea of groping one’s way through the ruins of civilization is a striking contemporary nightmare; the Triffids (plants that are predators) became the final, dramatic threat to human survival. This is a post-catastrophe story with a biological premise. Scary. A beautiful book in full leather and gilt designs and lettering.