Day of the Triffids

An examination of ecological concepts and their relation to materialist ethics in Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, as well as its connection to earlier works of British utopian fiction such as Morris' News from Nowhere, and to later "zombie apocalypse" works such as 28 Days Later and World War Z.

The article discusses how the emerging genre of American and British science fiction symbolised and expressed Cold War anxieties after 1949. 
It begins by briefly showing how a popular Western symbolised the Berlin Airlift, then considers how several new Sci Fi novels, including "The Martian Chronicles," "The Day of the Triffids," "I am Legend," and "The Bodysnatchers" each respond more precisely to changing Soviet aggression. 
The chief writers explored are Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, John Wyndham, Richard Matheson, Jack Finney, and the television writer Terry Nation.  Connections are drawn between key science fiction novels and public concerns about possible atomic war, espionage fears, future Soviet invasion, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It then suggests a shift in meaning affecting British science fiction from the mid-1950s, with rising fears about the demise of empire, and concerns that European civilisation is waning.  The chief writers discussed in this regard are John Christopher, whose work is linked with the Suez Crisis, & J.G. Ballard's "The Drowned World."  Strong links are also established between several British science fiction novels and William Golding's "Lord of the Flies."
9pp.

Analysis of John Christopher's The Death of Grass and John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids as two dystopian, 1950s British SF novels inextricably linked to the time and place in which they were written, and how this affects their portrayals of the disaster's impact on their characters.

A consideration of the zombie apocalypse in relation to the anarchist utopian thought beginning with William Morris, tracing its development through John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids and Max Brooks' World War Z, with sidelights upon 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead.

One of the most successful ecostrategies to broach mainstream discourse has been the liberal ecology of Al Gore, most notably through his film An Inconvenient Truth (2006).  Gore's warnings of an impending apocalypse were shortly followed by a spike in the production of ecohorror films such as The Ruins (2008), The Happening (2008), and a remake of The Day of the Triffids (2009).  By examining Gore's ecostrategy in contrast to The Day of the Triffids within the framework of Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomatic concepts of the refrain and reterritorialization, this article asserts that the film's theme offers a superior strategy to Gore's liberal ecology.