Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
Knivesout no more
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was a prolific sf pulp writer in the 30s, under a variety of pen-names. It was the 50s, however, that he really came into his own, writing a series of memorable, largely post-apocalytpic novels under the name John Wyndham. His best known works, such as The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos, depict unforseen disasters descending over normal, middle-class British settings. Eschewing the cliched space-opera approach, Wyndham grounded his stories in well-depicted, realistic situations - which he then proceeded to turn upside down. The Day of the Triffids, for instance, deals with a meteor shower that blinds everyone who sees it, followed by a mass invasion of carnivorous plants (escaped from a secret experimental project). Wyndham very skilfully depicts the utter breakdown of civilized life that follows from these events. There is a deeply unsettling quality to this, and his other works, showing as it does, how thin a veneer our civilized norms and mores are, even though he manages to pull off a positive ending in most cases.
His works were very accesible to the non-genre reader as well, since they did not partake of any of the genre cliches that may have put them off. They have also provided the basis for several movies, with varied results. The best of the lot is probably the excellent 'Village of the Damned' (1960), which is based on The Midwich Cuckoos, a chilling tale of a group of super-human children in a sleepy British village.
Even if the superficial sumaries I've given a couple of his books here sound corny, the way he actually handles these ideas and explains them is very well handled. More than anything else, his books are though provoking and very smooth reads. He had a straight-forward, lucid style that makes the sense of unease that the story conveys that much more intense.
Definitely a writer worth checking out.
