SCIENCE FICTION: Plan for ChaosBy John Wyndham, Penguin, 234pp, £8.99
JOHN WYNDHAM'S Plan for Chaoswas completed in 1951, the same year as his science fiction classic The Day of the Triffids. It has remained unpublished until now; only his agent, fellow sci-fi writer Frederick Pohl, believed in it. Liverpool University Press, holders of the Wyndham archive, published it last year (at a prohibitive specialist price) and now we have the Penguin edition.
Wyndham's best novels are lively, drily humorous and thoroughly English. Sadly, Chaosis dull, mostly humourless and pseudo-American. While it starts promisingly in a lively detective noir style, it's downhill in Nazi flying saucers from the first seig heil on page 58.
The Nordic Nazi clones probably didn’t endear the book to the post-war American and British publishers but the complete absence of tension or excitement is a more fundamental problem.
The point of reading Chaoslies in tracing Wyndham's ideas: like Wells and Arthur C Clarke, his were visionary. It wasn't until Triffidsthat he found a consistent style and narrative pace with which to weave them into a satisfying story. Completed in 1951, both Chaosand Triffidsfeature military satellite technology; Triffidshas genetically modified crops; Chaoshas cloning. He is constantly concerned about the transience of human constructs and the future of the human race.
Wyndham's homely science fiction deals with how humanity can cope with natural disasters, aliens and uncontrolled technological progress. He is solidly pessimistic but always allows a sliver of hope. His heroes and heroines talk and talk about moral issues, which is fine in Triffidsas there's also plenty of action and a dollop of old-fashioned romance but, alas, not in Chaoswhich has neither.
Those of us who read Triffidsat an impressionable age rushed to the local library to get our hands on the remainder of Wyndham's apocalyptic novels. The Kraken Wakes (polar ice-caps are already melting in this 1953 work); The Chrysalids (humankind shows intolerance toward innocent mutants); and The Midwich Cuckoos (aliens impregnate the women of a quiet English village) are all prime examples of Wyndham's civilised, perfectly English science fiction. Influenced by HG Wells, he is always thoughtful: in Triffids, the hero and heroine have to face a world where polygamy may be necessary for the survival of the species; in a famous story, Consider Her Ways, men are surplus to requirements.
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, to give him his full name, lived a life which he said was only of interest to himself but that he “quite enjoyed”. Apart from serving in the British Army Signals during the war, he lived at the Quaker Penn Club in London from 1928 until 1963 when he married retired schoolteacher, Grace Wilson, whom he had known since 1931. The couple moved to the village of Steep in Hampshire. He died six years later, in 1969.
His work, called "cosy catastrophe" by one critic, eschews the frenetic space operas of hardcore science fiction and his descriptions are down-to-earth and full of cosy details. His tried many styles and genres (detective, thriller, sci-fi) before finding his mature voice and Chaoswas a stepping stone along his writer's way.
Tom Moriarty is an Irish Times journalist.
